


Black Mirror

by iblankedonmyname



Series: Ids, Egos, Superegos [2]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood Kink, Body Swap, Boot Worship, Campy, Coming Out, Consensual Sex, Drug Use, First Time, Gun play, Illustrations, Improvised Sex Toys, Knife Play, Leashes, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Palace, Oral Sex, Patricide, Porn with Feelings, Rare Pairings, Spit Kink, Spoilers, Torture, rape accusations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:29:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblankedonmyname/pseuds/iblankedonmyname
Summary: When Scorpius promises to remove his neural clone from John Crichton, he keeps a version for himself.
Relationships: Harvey/Scorpius (Farscape)
Series: Ids, Egos, Superegos [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596439
Comments: 42
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I was annoyed that there were never any scenes in the show with Scorpius and the ‘fun’ Harvey together. To me, it screamed missed opportunity because Scorpius surely suspected the neural bleed clone was helping John, and we all know that Scorpius would want to extract any information that the leftover clone had gleaned from season 3, because you don’t find out there is a traitor spy of you in the enemy’s brain and leave it there. You get it out. Find out what it knows.
> 
> A lot of why I wrote this section of this story was to see what they’d get up to. And while their conversations are great because Harvey is the friend you don’t trust and Scorpius is the enemy you should trust, I finally understand why they weren’t put together in the show. Because it’s not a stretch to realize they’d probably fuck. Like...Harvey after basically healing from his whole life while in John’s head (chronic pain, loveless childhood, relationships of convenience, alien in an alien world from day one) has become a hedonist. He wants to survive for the pleasure of things. And Scorpius who is totally okay with being broken and revels in it, is only really thirsty for revenge, securing survival, and the knowledge that aids him in those goals. He’ll take pleasure when he can get it. Uh hello. Nothing like the safety and security of exploring with yourself in your own head. They have good conversations too if that’s what gets you randy. I’m sorry everyone.
> 
> This chapter happens in Promises: Season 4 Episode 5

When Harvey woke up he was in liminal space, but he knew immediately it wasn’t Johns. The last memory he had was John sitting him down in a private space and saying goodbye. Scorpius, as a show of faith to John, had offered to purge him. John allowed it, but so had Harvey. He had a good run. At the time, he wondered distantly what neural clone heaven was like, or for that matter, hell. Unfortunately, where he was now was likely hell. The low mist parted as Scorpius approached. “Hello.”

“Hi dad.”

Scorpius’s face pinched, but he went on. “You are here for assimilation. Is there anything of note I need to know before you are absorbed back into my subconscious.”

“What happened?”

“You were copied from John’s brain back onto a chip. The original neural bleed clone has been altered with the addition of a new neural chip that contains new behaviors. You were duplicated for reassimilation.”

Harvey snorted. “You don’t want to assimilate me.”

It was odd watching his own expressions reflected back. Scorpius’s brow twitched. He took a sharp breath. “And why’s that?”

“You just don’t. Trust me.”

“Of course I trust you, but I’d like to know why.” Harvey was certain that Scorpius did not trust him. At this point, Scorpius must be aware that he, his initial spy, was a traitor. Otherwise why go to the trouble of copying him and regulating the original with new codes.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” Harvey summoned two chairs.

Scorpius smothered his surprise. He hadn’t thought that the newcomer could manipulate his subconscious. Harvey had enough practice and while Scorpius’s mind was new, he knew it well enough. Scorpius sat on the edge of the seat as if he didn't want to acknowledge the chair was truly there, outside his control. “Why don’t I want to assimilate you?”

“You’re not gonna like this but I’m in love with John Crichton.”

Scorpius blanched, openly surprised now. He stood with a snap. “You’re what?”

“Oh yeah. Been for a while.”

“That’s not possible.” He took a moment to swallow his anger. Scorpius strode paces closer to Harvey. “John Crichton is going to get billions of people conquered, raped, and annihilated with his insane moral high ground. He’s naive, brutish, and irresponsible. He doesn’t see reason. He has been a nagging, impossible splinter in my side for cycles and is leading the galaxy into a deadly war that he doesn’t have the sense to be fearful of.”

“Correction. He’s made your life terrible, my life has been great. And I didn’t say John loves me. I said I am in love with John. You saw how quickly he got rid of me. There was no love there.” Saying it aloud stung. “Anyway.” He swallowed past his regret. “I’m tainted. I wish I had died in John, but few can determine the location of their own death, hmm? But go ahead, dispose of me.”

Scorpius was pacing. The mists churned. He was deep in thought. After a moment, he turned back to Harvey and his obvious concern was apparent. “Not until I know how this happened. What did he do to you? Brainwashing? Is it a human talent? The first clone didn’t come back this way.”

“Brainwashing? Can you imagine John torturing anyone? I was in his head for two cycles and as you’ve experienced time in reality and time in the mind aren’t a one-to-one relationship. I’ve lived whole lives in John’s brain. The other clone also had a purpose. I was without one. I didn’t even think I could be removed. I thought I would die when John did.”

“Yes, you must’ve been integrated almost entirely. That would explain this level of cerebral contamination.”

Harvey leaned back in his chair. “Seems like a fair conclusion.”

“But it doesn’t explain this infatuation.” He said the word with a hiss like it was acid on his tongue.

“That’s right.”

Scorpius grappled with his internal thoughts, scowling deeper and deeper. The liminal space was turning red and heating as he mentally struggled.

“Calm down. You’re overheating.”

“I know I’m overheating!” Scorpius snapped. “We’ll continue this later.” And he was gone.

Left alone, Harvey had no interest exploring Scorpius’s mind. The less he knew about Scorpius’s life these last two cycles was honestly for the better. He had been actively working against him on more than a few occasions, so he had no interest in comparing cause and effect. Instead, he redecorated.

When Scorpius returned, the once black space was John’s lake in Maine. It was high summer. On the rocky lakeshore, Harvey had added John’s sofa and television from the early 70s. He was drinking a boat drink complete with umbrella and curly straw. He chose not to include mosquitos. “Took you long enough.”

“What is all this?” Awe and annoyance competed in Scorpius’s voice.

“I wasn’t going to sit patiently in your prison without changing things a little. Drink?” A drink appeared in Scorpius’s hand.

“How are you doing this?” Scorpius pitched the drink.

“It’s a skill I’ve acquired.”

Scorpius was barely containing his frustration.

“You have something you want to ask me.” Harvey fiddled with his drink.

“Is John Crichton a homosexual?”

Harvey put the boat drink down. “No. Not at all. He’s not even bisexual. Are you sure that’s the question you want to ask?”

“If he was that would have explained your infatuation from cerebral contamination.” He said more to himself than to Harvey.

Harvey rolled his eyes. “News flash, Scorpius, maybe you haven’t had time to think about it with all your pursuits of revenge or whatever, but we can get attracted to men without cerebral contamination, as you put it. That doesn’t have anything to do with John.”

Scorpius’s face tightened.

Harvey almost felt sorry for himself. He’d hate that though. It was best to keep these interactions free from emotions. “Let’s walk.” He didn’t check behind to see if Scorpius was following before lazily heading for the treeline. Eventually, his other self caught up.

“If a man came to you and said, ‘we should fuck’ would you say no?”

Scorpius was hard to read even on a good day, but he had clamped down his expressions. Harvey considered this a win. He was making some slight progress. After all, a person doesn’t need to regulate their expressions unless they are afraid of what they could emit. “I suppose, I would not say ‘no’. What’s it matter? This has never happened.”

“Maybe not in exact words. As long as you are now aware that it’s a possibility. That I was deposited in someone else’s brain with the capacity for attraction.” Harvey side-glanced at Scorpius as he walked alongside him.

Scorpius kept his neutral expression. “What question should I be asking instead?”

“I think you know.”

Scorpius thought. The woods met the lake water in interwoven and pitted tree roots. The water lapped into the hollows. Harvey congratulated himself on creating a good likeness.

At length, Scorpius tried again. “Why are you—” He sighed painfully, “in love with John?”

“Mmm, a good question. You skipped one though. First, ask yourself, do you have the capacity for love?”

Without a beat, Scorpius answered. “No.”

Harvey tsked.

Scorpius recoiled hissing, stopped Harvey in his tracks. “How could I possibly ‘love’? There is only one person that has got me through life, kept me alive, and that’s me.”

“You’ve lived your entire life on survival mode. There is no place in the galaxy where you can relax and take stock of what you want from a life at peace. Since your birth, you’ve been at odds with your environment and with others, mostly people that want to annihilate you for simply existing or significantly alter you for their own purposes.”

Harvey glanced back to his other. His eyes were distant with introspection and barely registered that he was being looked at. “Yes and?” He muttered to the ground.

“Even if you somehow found a planet where people didn’t try to abuse you in this way, you would still be an outsider, an oddity. In most cultures, this means you’ll be isolated and treated poorly unless you are somehow lucky enough to be needed. Earth is no exception to this conundrum. It’s not a paradise for people that are alien either. Except, I wasn’t living on Earth when I was in John’s mind. I was living in John’s perception of Earth. He is an obscenely normal human in behavior and appearance. His memories of Earth gave me time to explore being ordinary. I finally could experience a world that wasn’t constantly at odds with me. I had a lot of freedom. It was very fulfilling. It is very unlike reality. It was easy to love.” Harvey examined the shimmer of the lake between the trees. They had stopped in a dark cove.

“And it’s not hard to be attracted to John. He is charming, thrilling, and attractive, even by Sebacean standards. He is fiercely loyal. He is surprisingly complicated for someone I assumed would be basic. If I inserted myself as the object of his affections in his memories, it was hard to resist returning them.”

Scorpius was standing in the darker shadows of the trees away from the lake’s reflection. He appeared glacial, frozen in place and paler than normal. “Wait, did you and John—?”

Harvey sighed to the ground. “That’s complicated.”

He hissed and jolted into motion, strode closer to Harvey in accusation. “It’s not complicated.” The woods were beginning to smolder and ashen. “Wormholes are complicated. The war between the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers is complicated. Did you sleep with Crichton?!”

Harvey was adamant about not being embarrassed. “Yes.” His meek response made him angry at his weakness. “But not the waking Crichton, and almost always not as myself.”

Scorpius’s already brittle control crumbled. He slammed Harvey against a slowly charing tree. “As if that’s acceptable! It's vile. You’re as bad as Grayza.”

Suddenly, Harvey felt off-center. There was an expectation that he’d be the controller of this entire conversation. Harvey, after all, had the information Scorpius sought, but Scorpius was also a critical observer. Still, the accusation burned, almost as much as the now flaming forest. “It wasn’t like that.” But maybe he was just as bad a Grayza.

Scorpius peeled away from him and to his retreating back, Harvey bellowed louder. “It wasn’t like that!” But Scorpius was gone. He’d left.

Harvey collapsed onto the ashen ground. The lake steamed as volcanic vents cracked open underneath. Around him, the trees burned.

“No wonder he wanted you gone.” He finished quietly.

Harvey slept. He could’ve been dead for all he knew. It was unfortunate when he blinked his eyes open and he was in the burned forest. Snow and ash had turned the landscape white, all except for the spindly black trees. It would have been a painless end. Scorpius had likely taken the chip out. If only he had crushed it.

Scorpius looked as twisted and cold as the dead trees in the snowfall around him.

“Can’t just kill me then?” Harvey meagerly offered.

Scorpius crouched near Harvey. “No, I think not.”

“Sadistic bastard.” Harvey chuckled.

“It’s incredible that we have diverged so much. To think that if I was left alone in some human’s mind, even one such as Crichton's, I’d become not only infatuated but also a rapist.”

Harvey ached. The other’s eyes were so accusatory it burned to look at him. He shut his eyes. “As you say, but I was there. No one was hurt. I forced myself on no one. John is completely unaware and unscathed. It was as mercurial and surreal as your own dreams. The possibilities were endless. It felt quite natural.”

“Excuses. You’re a parasite.”

Harvey snapped his sight back to Scorpius. “Yes, you could be right. However, correct me if I’m wrong, I never said that residing in John made me a miraculously better person. It simply gave me the means to alter my perspective, and I did. This is what I’ve become.”

Scorpius scoffed and stood. The disgust stayed curled on his face. “Yes. I don’t think I will assimilate you.” He seemed to relax minutely, a sliver of his confidence returning. Harvey was nothing more than another defeated foe under his boot. If Scorpius so desired, this version could be swiftly dealt with and forgotten.

“Wise decision.” He looked up at Scorpius. “But before your departure, one more thing.” He licked his lips and prepared himself. “Would you like to know what it’s like to fuck a man?”

Scorpius startled. His self-satisfied smile vanished. It took him a microt to find his voice. “Are you propositioning me?”

Harvey grinned. “Oh yes, daddy.”

There was a beat before Scorpius punched him. Three more strikes later, a bruise on Harvey’s cheek had already begun weeping blood. He was thrown to the ground where Scorpius straddled him. The one-sided struggle continued. Harvey, with all the insight of being Scorpius, accepted each strike with an enjoyment that only comes from converting pain to pleasure. He groaned indulgently.

There was real venom in each hit. However, it took an obscene amount of abuse to make Harvey blackout, and that wasn’t Scorpius’s intention. This was foreplay. The release of blood from cuts being pummelled into his skin it’s own kind of grunting exertion. When he dizzily spit blood onto the snow, Scorpius rolled him over. “Your methods disgust me, but if you’re so eager to show me this, then I accept.”

Scorpius exposed himself and Harvey without ceremony. He spit on his own hand to coat his erection but did nothing for Harvey’s comfort before forcing himself bluntly in.

Harvey yelped, but pain he could work with. He pressed back rewarding him a surprised hiss from Scorpius, who stilled him by gripping his neck and holding him to the ashen dirty snow. His pace was sharp and uncomfortable. Harvey felt grossly tight and unaccommodating. Despite this, he was dripping hard. When his hand went down to fuck his fist, Scorpius growled. “No.” His arms were collected and pinned behind his back.

He was practically swallowing dirt druggedly, by the time Scorpius rocked up, sputtered out his orgasm. The world had gone red. To Harvey’s shock, under Scorpius’s recovering breathing, he shuddered and came. The glance they shared was mutually bewildered. Thankfully, Scorpius recognized there wasn’t anything to say. There was no quip that would put him at the advantage. He stood, collected himself, and disappeared.

Scorpius was back in his cell. He replaced a cooling rod and took out the chip. It sat in the palm of his hand like a tiny glittering arachnid. There was a moment, a small one but there, he did consider crushing it. It would have been a simple thing. He would have forgotten all about the clone by tomorrow. Instead, he put the chip back before closing the apparatus to his brain. The cell he had to reside in for Moya’s crew to feel falsely safe was very boring. There was plenty of free time to figure out what went wrong with his wayward clone, a perfect puzzle to toy with on the dull days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Scorpius's memories, Harvey revisits John's rape and deals with his newfound guilt creatively.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for a story that is mostly smut, I talk about rape a lot. I’m sure you’re here just to read some saucy words that make you all tingly. So why am I talking about rape so much? Well, it’s a big part of Scorpius’s whole deal, isn’t it? When I first came into this fandom, I immediately started looking for Scorpius/John stories, and what I found was a lot of rape. This hurt, because I find it insulting. Scorpius might be a murderer, a liar, self-invested, threatening, a voyeur, and a torturer, but a big part of his character is that he doesn’t like rape on a super personal level. Sure, he’s queer coded. Making a villain a bit sexually threatening to the white cis straight male protagonist is not a new thing, and it’s effective, he was an uncomfortable villain, but a huge motivation for me writing these stories was to do better by Scorpius. If I was going to write that he’s into men, I wanted to make it really layered and rich and complicated, because he’s a great rich layered complicated character. Anyway, let’s talk about Scorpius and rape. Getting off my soapbox now, enjoy some smut.
> 
> This takes place in Season 4: Episode 7 John Quixote.  
> H+S are in memories from Season 4: Episode 2-3 What Was Lost.

Harvey stepped out of Scorpius’s head into his cell on Moya. He didn’t often visit the real world now that he lived in his original’s head, but he was bored and Scorpius was seemingly distracted. Sikozu was in his cell and was a beautiful distraction in red and revealing skin, but Scorpius was intently considering John Crichton’s chessboard, which had been removed from his quarters and placed on the table in his own cell.

Harvey remembered the chessboard well. When John thought Harvey was a sign of his fracturing sanity, he played chess with himself to prove he was still rational. Later he would play chess against Harvey to prove that Harvey wasn’t a part of him. They would share tactics over a game. The board, itself, acted as a kind of common ground for the two of them.

It appeared that the chip clone had brought the game to Scorpius and in turn, Scorpius had taught Sikozu when she approached him with the pilfered board. She was a decent opponent despite only learning an ahn or two ago. Scorpius decided on a move and went towards his bishop.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Harvey interjected.

Scorpius’s eye twitched, and he scowled deeply but said nothing. He moved the bishop.

Sikozu sucked her bottom lip for a microt or two, before smiling widely. She made her own move excitedly. “Check!”

“Pretend you let her win. It’ll score you a different kind of point.” Harvey leaned over his shoulder to flick the king off its base.

Scorpius’s eyes narrowed, and he slammed Harvey back into his brain. Pinned against a crumbling wall by the throat, Scorpius hissed at him. “You do not have permission to enter my reality. Ever.”

“All this seems very familiar.” Harvey gurgled.

“Then it should be easy for you not to forget. While John was unable to dispose of you, I can. Don’t do it again.” Scorpius dropped him and left in an instant.

Harvey rubbed his neck, glowered at the spot Scorpius once stood. He hoped he lost the game and wasn’t sensible enough to act the fool. Where Scorpius had brought him in his hurried transition between reality and memory was also familiar. It smelt heavily of a salt sea even from deep within the bunker-like sandstone walls. He could hear water lapping and a cool wind billowing from certain tunnels. Still, Harvey couldn’t place when he’d been here before. Curious now, he walked down a sandy-floored hallway out into the hot sunlight. He emerged on a rocky coastline.

It took him a few more microts to remember that John had been here before too. It was a week or so before he was duplicated and rehomed in Scorpius’s brain. During that time, Harvey was living the life. He had carved out a small corner of Crichton’s head, filled it with every attractive person John had ever seen and was acting out a lavish fantasy in which he was a dashing secret agent. It was so all-encompassing, Harvey had disappeared for the days John struggled on this planet, which was unfortunate because John really could’ve used Harvey’s help. Grayza was here, and so was Scorpius, and death was almost imminent at times.

Harvey really wanted a vacation after the Command Carrier blew up, but John was bored and listless on Elack, the elderly leviathan. During that time, John spent long ahns in his own head, either willing up a version of Aeryn to taunt him or actually opting to speak to Harvey. This thrilled Harvey, who sometimes would call up John’s shadow Aeryn just to bait him into coming to visit. After Chiana and Rygel reappeared, the visits petered off. Harvey admitted he was moody about it, and disappeared for a bit. He didn’t expect to disappear so entirely.

When he resurfaced, John was shaken. He wasn’t showing it outwardly, but his nightmares had taken a turn to unwanted touches and inescapable sensations. Harvey, perturbed, dug into what he missed, and realized quickly he was a bad friend. He hadn’t much practice with being a friend in the first place, but his absence was inexcusable. John had been sexually violated on this planet, Arnessk, while Harvey had been off enjoying himself.

Guilt bubbled up in him, which was a relatively new emotion for Harvey, something that came about from his habitation in John’s memories. John, after all, was very familiar with guilt, and it preyed on his mind often. Scorpius, however, was not. Learning to recognize this particular feeling was an unfortunate side-effect to living in John so frelling long. Harvey withered slightly.

Standing in Scorpius’s memory of these particularly painful days, Harvey was inspired to explore Scorpius’s side of the event. He couldn’t tell if the inspiration came from attempting to dispel his own guilt or perhaps, to lay it on thicker, but he replayed the memory from the beginning. It wasn’t pretty and only made his discomfort worse.

Scorpius’s motor skills were compromised from the drug inserted in his brain but his cognition was unaffected. The memory played out perfectly. The leash. Grayza’s boot. The unwanted humiliation. The failed murder attempt. The burial. The subsequent escape. From John’s perspective, watching Scorpius’s punishment was another strange circumstance in a long list of uncomfortable memories, but from Scorpius’s, it felt like rape. Again.

Harvey wallowed in his guilt, unable to untangle why he felt guilty for Scorpius’s treatment until he remembered Scorpius was being subjected to torture because of his failure on the Command Carrier. He had failed twice, first in his original purpose to protect Scorpius and second in his found purpose to help John.

By the time Scorpius returned, Harvey was drowning in an emotional soup of his own creation. If it was John, he would have scrapped himself back together, put on an anxious smile, but for Scorpius, he remained sprawled on the rocky coastline with a dramatic arm slung over his eyes. “I hope you lost and that she thinks you’re too dumb to flirt with now.”

Scorpius grumbled. “I won, in fact, despite your unwanted intrusion. Why are you here?” He recognized the location immediately. His nose wrinkled in disgust.

“Courtesy of you. You brought me here,” Harvey said miserably.

Scorpius tapped him with his boot. “Why are you on the ground?”

Harvey peeked at him from under his arm. From this angle, Scorpius was intimidatingly massive, a tall black tower into the sky. For Harvey, drowning in his anxiety, the idea of punishment was deeply arousing. “How about a game?”

“Chess?” Scorpius’s slight excitement at another game of chess versus the possibilities Harvey could conjure at whim annoyed his clone. It almost ruined Harvey’s fantasy of this dominating figure hovering over him.

“Oh no. Not that. Here.” And he summoned a chained leash that connected to a collar at his neck. “Take it.”

Scorpius was immediately skeptical. “No.” His lip curled down in a snarl. “Why?”

“It’ll make you feel better about this whole situation. Trust me.”

For a moment, Harvey was almost positive that Scorpius was going to leave. That his request had hit too sharply on something that Scorpius had no interest in reliving even if the situation was reversed. Surprisingly, this didn’t happen. Scorpius collected the leash from Harvey and held it loosely as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn’t moved his pawn forward on this new game.

Harvey wasn’t about to wait for Scorpius to decide otherwise. He rolled onto his belly and crawled over. He lavished his tongue on Scorpius’s boot toe, lapped up to his ankle.

“You’re volunteering to do this?”

“What bootlicking? Or is it bootblacking? Where do our boots actually end if they’re integrated with everything? Which buckle?” Harvey peaked up at him from his knee. “I could keep licking? Spitshine every square henta.”

Scorpius pulled the leash chain through his open palm, feeling the individual links, while he thought. The leash tightened on Harvey’s throat, so from his kneeled position, he stretched up to Scorpius’s waist. Tingly from the pressure on his neck, and seeing Scorpius distractedly thinking, Harvey opened his mouth to lap at Scorpius’s codpiece.

That shook him alert, he snapped the leash and yanked Harvey off. “No. You don’t get the privilege. My boots are good enough for you.” He fell into thought again, “Perhaps too good. Dirty them.”

Harvey glanced around. The memory had some potential; dirt, stone, and sand, but he had a better idea. He wondered if his other would approve of it. He unbuckled his own codpiece while keeping a close eye on Scorpius. Under Scorpius’s considering eye, he stroked himself stiff, pleased that he garnered his original’s permission.

The leash was kept at a choking length, which helped Harvey masturbate into his hand. He wanted it to be purposely slow, meditative as if stretching the process out would banish his anxieties thoroughly. The leash’s tightness on his neck prevented his mind from wandering into fantasy. He stayed focused on the latex-clad thigh in front of him and his own throbbing cock, which was already beading with precum.

Desperately he tried to drag out the buildup. He leaned his head into Scorpius’s thigh but was dragged sharply away. His pace was becoming erratic as his brain stuttered.

Harvey grit his teeth against cumming, but the shivering warmth coiling from his groin couldn’t be contained. He open-mouthed whined, and hazily guided his spew onto Scorpius’s boot. The blankness that settles after orgasm draped over him, his body heavy.

“Good. Now clean it up.” Scorpius’s voice was velvety, an uncommon intonation.

It was easy for Harvey to slump forward on his hands, and bend to lick his ejaculate from the leather. He took his time lathering his tongue on the shoe until his mess was devoured.

“That’s enough.” Scorpius tugged the chain up, so Harvey followed before kicking him down onto the rocky ground. With one knee, he pressed roughly on Harvey’s upper sternum, whose breathing became labored under the increasing pressure. Harvey had floated past feeling guilty, and despite being unable to take a full breath, was slipping into a deep encompassing calm. Between lidded eyes, he found Scorpius appeared equally relaxed.

The knee was withdrawn as Scorpius sat on his chest. Havey gasped a lungful of air, completely buzzed with endorphins. Scorpius grabbed Harvey’s chin and with his thumb, felt the edges of his teeth. Between the two of them, a new awareness of the other formed in that simple connection. Scorpius hawked spit into Harvey’s mouth, who drunkenly swallowed it.

Together, they settled their breathing. Harvey would’ve liked more, but he was relieved with Scorpius’s sudden ease. Every interaction since their first, Scorpius was always on edge, either demanding information about his betrayal or attempting to decipher him like a science project. To ask for more sexual gratification now would likely disturb the moment, so he tried another tactic.

“Do you still think about our mother?” Harvey wasn’t sure how this question would come across to Scorpius, but it was a topic that had surfaced stealthily in Harvey’s mind in this aftermath. He expected to be slapped, and he almost would’ve enjoyed that response.

Scorpius didn’t slap him, instead, his brow furrowed. “You know the answer to that. Have we changed so much that you don’t?”

“No, I still think about her.” He would have liked to have met her in person. While in John’s mind, he tried to build her from scratch, but there was too much information missing. He hadn’t a clue about how she acted or behaved outside of what little Scorpius had found. What did she like? What did she sound like when she laughed? All those traits were unknown. “Do you find it strange that I’m bringing her up right now?”

“A little.” Scorpius considered the sky in his memory. It was a blanket of cloudless blue that met rolling blue waves. “But I understand it. I lived through this. It didn’t ruin me. I didn’t die. Our mother wasn’t so fortunate. Grayza has something to learn about torture from the Scarrans. Maybe she’ll get the chance.”

“She’s a fool,” Harvey muttered sharply.

“Finally something we can both agree on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I rewatched these episodes I found it funny that each time John was getting ‘worked over’ by Grayza, he’d always say something like ‘Scorpius didn’t torture me like this’. And my dumb brain, sitting over on the couch, was like ‘he probably would’ve if you asked, you weirdo.’ I hope whoever wrote these episodes got the mistress they were dreaming about, because whoa-nelly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During his time visiting Katoya, Scorpius revisits the death of his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because yup, had to make this happen. This is the final chapter I’m writing for this story. I went a little overboard. Because the addition of this chapter undoes a future one, I’ve edited the affected chapter a smidge.
> 
> This takes place during Season 4 Episode 15: Mental as Anything

Katoya fostered calm. Scorpius always enjoyed being in his presence. He was a good mentor; considerate, creative, and challenging. It was a respite to be off Moya, despite the company and the turmoil it brought. D’Argo was struggling to resist killing his brother-in-law, Macton. Scorpius believed that this was the perfect place for D’Argo to have a breakthrough. Still, his distress spread, and while Scorpius was pensive during their instruction, it was hard to stay emotionally removed. D’Argo had fathered a hybrid with a Sebaccean woman that either he or her brother killed.

When Scorpius had met Jothee, cycles back in the Shadow Depository, Natira asked if his father, D’Argo, had raped his mother. This question made Jothee uncomfortable, but he denied it immediately. Scorpius still thought about the horror that crossed his face in that microt, a mere hint of how ill it had made Scorpius when he discovered his own origins. Hybrids always came from troubled homes. It was a universal truth. If D’Argo hadn’t been imprisoned for his wife’s murder, another misfortune would have popped up to drive a rift into their family. After all, where was Jothee now? Not on Moya. Scorpius hadn’t asked and he wouldn’t. The pressure of D’Argo’s family unrest offset by Katoya’s cool stability made him revisit some old memories he hadn’t chosen to reflect on in some time, namely his own father.

Over ten cycles ago, finding Wolesh was challenging. He was a common soldier in a massive empire. He was barely a footnote in Scorpius’s unfortunate birth, short of his genetic analysis and his involvement. Afterward, he blended back into his regiment, practically disappeared, an unimpressive soldier living his sanctioned, unimpressive life. 

Scorpius went to extremes to track him down. He was a low-ranking Peacekeeper at the time. Only a cycle or two had passed after he had escaped the Dreadnaught a second time and froze Tauza to death. He had few contacts to capitalize on, short of those he made in the uncharted territories during his teenage years and the Peacekeeper databanks, which were woefully incomplete. Surprisingly, the person that delivered Wolesh’s last known location was Natira, which meant that Scorpius would be indebted to her, but he paid back her help tenfold until she could no longer make that claim. Much like when he sought information about his mother, a single question motivated him to seek his father.

Where he finally found him was humid. The rain was constant, despite the two suns bleaching brightly through the dark clouds and downpour. It hurt to look at, a planet with only blinding white light and cobalt sharp shadows.

Scorpius remembered the mud and the monochromatic landscape. He saw the younger memory version of himself walk a familiar path from a distance. When Harvey appeared, he immediately drew back. “Feeling masochistic today then? Apologies that I have better things to do.” He turned to leave.

“Stay,” Scorpius commanded, which made Harvey pause before quietly hovering. His discomfort was evident.

Scorpius let the memory play out. He felt obligated to revisit cycle after cycle to see if his opinions had changed. Wolesh was on guard duty for the Scarran encampment. He was soaked and muddy, but as a full-blood Scarran, he either barely minded or actually enjoyed the weather. Steam billowed off his skin, the damp evaporated quickly on his heated body. In the strange light, his equine head appeared pitted and crying.

Scorpius had walked up to him openly, and although he had schooled himself to be calm, he was halfway to feral. “Are you Wolesh?”

Wolesh brandished his weapon, while his head rose sharply. “I don’t answer to anyone but my superiors. You can’t be here.”

“I am Scarran.” He lifted his own with a mockery of pride.

Wolesh swung his head up and down, eyeing him over. “You’re too small to be an elite.”

It was to Scorpius’s benefit that he wasn’t born with a soldier’s profile. He smelled Scarran, and he _almost_ looked like a member of the ruling caste. Often this worked well for him. “Are you Wolesh?”

And Wolesh was torn between failing to answer a possible elite or failing to follow his directives as a guard. “Yes, I am.” He admitted. “Who is asking?”

“I am your son.” He prevented the hiss from escaping.

The skull-like head twisted higher in the air before leaning closer and sniffing. “Ah. So you are.” His teeth showed in a Scarran smile. “They let you wander around like this? Do you have a handler?” 

“They are in town. I have a wide range, and asked to speak with you alone.” Scorpius had lied many times before but this one tasted like a rich dessert. He presented it like one too.

Wolesh settled at this lie, lowered his weapon. He wasn’t particularly bright. Scorpius added one more tally to the benefit of his mother. “What about?” The tall, dumb animal responded.

“What do you think of me?” To Scorpius, this was a decadently open-ended question. He knew what the normal Scarran rhetoric would be despite his hope for otherwise.

He answered unhurriedly. “You are small. You look fragile. But I’m sure the upper caste doesn’t like that you come from warrior stock and look the way you do.” He snorted. “You must make them sick.” Then he accessed him again. “Are you considered a success?”

“No. I’m considered a failure.” Scorpius felt his body crackle with spite. He imagined slowly sinking his thumbs deep into Wolesh’s eye sockets already, the wet goo of the brains and the brow bone breaking beneath his hands. There was only one way this was going to end. It was apparent.

“Ah. So be it, I suppose. What more can I do for you?” Wolesh was unable to recognize his own danger although Scorpius was sure his scent changed in the last few microts. Plotting someone’s cruel demise was hard to hide under a superior nose, but Wolesh put too much faith in his size and rifle.

“Why did you decide to rape her?” He couldn’t hide the growl behind his facade of calm. His heating unit began to hum.

Wolesh tilted his head. “Who?”

Scorpius practically spit. “My mother. She could have been inseminated artificially.”

Boney ridges rippled with amusement. “Did I rape her? I suppose. I mean why wouldn’t I? She smelled nice. She smelled like fear. They gave her to me because my genetics were ordinary and I did good work. She was my reward. Having a successful trial pregnancy meant nothing to me. You being here alive has no value to me. It grants me no prestige. You said yourself you are a failed experiment. You clearly are weak if you came all this way for some alien woman’s honor.”

And there it was. The answer was as plain and predictable as he expected. Scorpius was boiling with anger, but his voice managed to stay level. “Her name is Rylani Jeema Dellos, and she wasn’t just some alien woman.” 

Wolesh, already a death mask in Scorpius’s mind, barked out a laugh. His teeth were bone bleached. “Where is your handler, boy? You may smell Scarran, but you could use more conditioning I think. I owe you nothing.”

Scorpius decided it was time for him to die after being called ‘boy’. Three arns ago, when the guard changed, Scorpius set up the trap. With a small delay, Wolesh was able to finish the word ‘owe’ before invisible wires snapped around his meaty neck and began to garote the breath from him. He choked on ‘nothing’ and thrashed in the rain and mud. Effectively muted and dying, he dug at the wires twisting into his windpipe with his claws. His purple thick tongue lolled dryly out of his mouth. Scorpius stepped to him practically ignited with hateful glee and delivered on his desire to gouge his eyes out. The rest of the encampment was locked tightly and torched with incendiary bombs. He must have killed hundreds that day. He watched the place transform to smolders alongside the massive, decapitated head of his father. When it was done, he left it piked on the sodden ashes and left.

“It wasn’t as satisfying as we thought it would be,” Harvey said subdued. He remembered the pain of going to this planet and the pain of leaving this planet, both were unique. There was no other option for him either. It was inevitable that he had to find and kill his father because a world in which he continued to live was unacceptable. It was painful in its own way.

“No. Defeating the Scarrans en masse will be better. His death was a stepping stone to realizing that his entire race needs to be stopped.” For cycles, at least up until recently, Scorpius believed the only way to stop the Scarrans was to kill them all. If John were to share the wormhole data now, he might return to that outlook. It was hard to say. He didn’t want to assume what the future had in store. He simply needed to stop the war first, hold the line.

Harvey shook his head. “Do you listen to yourself sometimes? Destroying the Scarrans won’t soothe this itch of yours. You're desperate to scratch at it til bloody bone, even then you’d keep digging.”

“If that’s what it takes to keep the galaxy from them, I will. This isn’t only about my own revenge.” Like in the memory, his voice stayed level. “Besides your opinion is worthless. You’re a bodiless, corrupted figment, brought to heel in John’s unaffected mind.”

“If my opinion is so worthless, then why are you affected by my negative appraisal. Your revenge won’t serve you even if you succeed.” Revenge was a false errand for those suffering from trauma. Harvey had read books on it. Earth loved writing about trauma and psychology. 

“ _If_ I succeed? _If?_ You mean when.” Scorpius’s constructed ease was crumbling.

“This is a pattern, Scorpius. What you feel about the death of your father in this memory will be repeated again no matter the scale. A band-aid for an oozing poisoned wound—” Harvey didn’t expect to be slammed into the muddy ground, but Scorpius was more willing to let his anger breakthrough when it came to himself, over others. 

“What do you know?! Fantasies and delusions. You’ve forgotten everything of value!” Sneered Scorpius denches from Harvey’s nose.

Harvey knew the best way to cut him. “And you’re acting quite Scarran right now. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, did it?”

Scorpius recoiled, but the mud was coursing, sticky and hungry. It was suddenly challenging to stand upright, the sludge was rising past his calves, thighs. Harvey had sunk in the slurry, slipping from Scorpius’s grip. He recognized that this was his clone’s doing, so when the muck seethed up over him, blocking the blue and white world from view, Scorpius didn’t struggle. Beneath the mud was a new memory. It wasn’t one of his. 

John sat in the half-light of a dimly lit living room gripping a glass until he was white-knuckled. He was hunching forward over it, watching the fluid inside swirl, his face obscured. It was a well-furnished space, with a half-open sliding glass door where a warm ocean wind blew. Scorpius sat across from him with a similar glass of brown liquid. 

“We should have told her more often.” John sighed deeply.

“Told her what?” Scorpius heard himself say. It unnerved him that he was unable to pull out of the rote script. He wasn’t able to place who he was in this memory either, so he was forced to perform the process unaware of the dynamics at play.

Then John lifted his head, and his eyes were red-ringed and shivering like from his time in the Aurora Chair. “Told her we loved her. We should have told mom we loved her more.”

“I told her every day.” Scorpius recognized immediately that this was John’s father. Harvey had trapped him inside John’s father. He would kill the clone the next time he saw him, but where was he now? He wasn’t visible.

“Yeah, but did you mean it?” John’s voice was choked with emotions. It sounded wet.

“She was my wife! Of course, I meant it. Every time.” He paused to shoot the remnants of the glass. It burned, but the body he inhabited didn't mind. The sharp sting helped alleviate the pain of John’s accusation. “But from you. She could have heard it from you more often.”

John hid his face down in the shadows again, sipped his drink. “I know.” It was barely audible.

“She loved you so much.” This was stated almost breathily, wistful. Scorpius didn’t like it. He felt a sting of envy.

John repeated the ‘I know’ but louder and inadvertently flung himself up to standing, a useless motion that obviously surprised himself. He went to refill his glass.

“Why are you so angry?” John’s father said, almost in awe of John’s misplaced emotions.

“Because she shouldn’t have ignored it!” Scorpius wasn’t sure what the _it_ was. Perhaps she was ill and waited too long before seeking medical help. His previous clone had shared something similar.

“She didn’t want anyone to fuss over her.” John’s father murmured. His shame was evident.

“That’s what I’m talking about dad. The only time you showed her attention was when you thought she was doing something wrong.” John paced, hissing out each accusatory word.

“You want to talk about this now!? My wife is dead, your mother. The funeral is tomorrow, and now is the time you want to get into this. I’m sorry you feel guilty, but don’t come after me. I did the best I could for her, always. If it didn’t live up to your expectations, well, I’m only human. I think she loved me regardless, and for that, I’m so thankful.” He was wet-eyed. Scorpius internally raged from his prison.

John’s eye twitched. “I should kill you.” He purred grotesquely, but behind his sinister grin, smugness flashed. The statement broke whatever hold the memory had on Scorpius. He was able to function outside of the past.

“Harvey," Scorpius recognized his clone like knowing his own reflection in a mirror. "Is this what you got up to in John’s mind?”

Harvey as John crossed the living room and effectively penned Scorpius in with his hands on the chair’s armrests. “And more. You don’t like it?”

“No, I don’t. It’s a puppet show.” He hated sitting behind the voice and actions of John’s father. The familiarity between father and son was too foreign. The vulnerability John had was too uncomfortable.

“You’d get used to it, trust me.” Harvey as John settled his thighs over Scorpius’s and sat tightly. His jeans snuggly stretched over his legs.

The idea of being continually out of control unnerved Scorpius as much as this facade of John straddling his lap, but Harvey was trying to push a reaction out of him and Scorpius was adamant he wasn’t going to receive it. His drive to remain unaffected lasted as long as the expanse of time between John sitting and John licking into the hollow of his cheek. Scorpius stood so sharply, he threw John to the floor. He hissed threateningly.

John laughed from the carpet. “And here I thought you were feeling masochistic today.” Scorpius and John interacting always caused pain for them both. Harvey had a sick curiosity about how this situation would play out. “Let’s see how right I am.” He hooked his foot behind Scorpius’s knee and twisted, collapsing his leg.

His other recovered into a controlled fall and smacked John hard across the jaw. He slammed back, full-fisted, which caught Scorpius off guard. Harvey had rarely fought back, but now he grabbed both sides of Scorpius's skull and cracked their heads together. His ears hummed as he shook off his daze. John was reeling back for another strike, but Scorpius caught him sharply in the throat. They rolled, banging each other into the ground and scrambling for leverage to strike effectively.

John was doing well. He had caught Scorpius behind the neck, pinned him face-first to the floor. “I’m becoming excited.” He bit out with teeth red from a wounded lip. “What about you?”

“Is that what this is about?” Growled Scorpius into the carpet.

“Not initially, but,” John played with Scorpius’s belt. “I’d hate to miss an opportunity.”

It was true that sometimes Scorpius had a challenging time discerning the difference between anger, pain, and arousal. At a point, they all felt similar, like a medley of ingredients boiled for too long in his overheated brain. Was he angry? Yes. Always. He spent most of his life curtailing it, but it remained a current flowing darkly beneath any appearance he crafted. Was he in pain? Yes. Now and often. The physical pain of his condition was one pain to deal with daily, but the emotional pain of his birth was something he elected to visit often enough. Arousal? Well, that was there too. He hadn’t considered it much until Harvey had brought it up. 

Scorpius rolled John off and struck him in the face. John grappled his forearms before throwing him to the ground again. One hand captured both of Scorpius’s wrists and pinned them above his head. The other deftly unbelted him. Scorpius was half hard and shaking with indignation. 

John purred at him. “See? I know you better than you know yourself.” He undid his own belt, lowered his zipper, and dragged his waistband down to release his erect cock.

Scorpius jerked up trying to throw him, but John clucked, reached down to collect Scorpius’s manhood and his own in a fist. He pumped them together. Scorpius grit his teeth against the swelling pleasure.

Seeing John reveal himself sexually, even if it was only Harvey, was incredibly aggravating. He had enough experience with John’s nudity from his previous chip clone and from John’s time in the aurora chair. However, this pantomimed interaction was a new line crossed. Despite his attempts to resist succumbing to the stimulation, he was thickening under John’s pistoning hand. The friction against another’s hard length was thrilling.

Still, his anger failed to leave him. He wasn’t easily disarmed of his drive to hurt John, so when he finally broke his hands-free, he went to John’s throat, but short of a rasped, excited stutter, no amount of pressure seemed to lessen John’s ministrations. He bliss-eyed smiled down at Scorpius, so he tried a different tactic. He reached down between John’s legs and grabbed his balls, twisted.

John wheezed as if punched in the abdomen. He let go of Scorpius to stabilize himself. “Do that again.” He pleaded.

Instead, Scorpius pushed him off and slammed his fists into John’s face until he lay dazed and groaning under him. “Why do I humor you at all?”

Harvey’s answer would be ‘because when else would you experience this,’ but he bit his tongue. “Fuck me.”

Scorpius prickled, a surprising lance of shame bolted into him. Shame wasn’t common for him, but he had felt it earlier. There was shame interwoven with the memory of killing his father. He always wanted answers to difficult questions, but he never seemed to steel himself properly against the inevitability that answers to difficult questions were often unpleasant. His father was one of these examples. John below him bloody, exhausted, and exposed was similar to a difficult question, but Scorpius couldn’t place how. He rolled John over, because when else would he experience this after all.

He dragged John’s pants to his knees. The urgency of finishing the fight was gone, replaced by tentativeness. He reminded himself that the real John was jailed in a flaming pit right now, undergoing anti-scarran training instead of below him, before he pressed two gloved fingers into John’s cavity. It was tight. Desire coiled fiercely in Scorpius’s gut. He rubbed his erection between John’s ass cheeks, tilted his hips to enter him shallowly, at first, and then entirely. 

This was masochistic. It had to be. The pleasure was significant, but hearing John moan in time with his thrusts, an ugly, unnamable emotion twisted like a buried worm. His mad scramble to name it as he penetrated his long-time enemy and now, unlikely protectee, compounded his arousal. It was unreachable. 

John was ruddy-cheeked against the ground. His eyes screwed tightly, open-mouthed, and stroking himself.

Scorpius reached his hand around to join him. John winced and hazily opened his eyes. “Mmm, nice of you.”

Refocusing on making John finish first, tempered his own reaction for some time. Harvey was normally very receptive, but distantly Scorpius wondered how accurate his portrayal of John was. John was rocking back and forth between Scorpius’s hand and his shaft, flushed and groaning. 

Scorpius practically tripped into his own ejaculation. One moment he was enjoying the clenched bucking of the man below him, his pleasure stricken face, and the next, he whited out like a blown circuit, woke up panting heavily face-first between John’s shoulder blades. Unable to stomach another embarrassment, he recovered by doubling his efforts to jerk off John, who thankfully came a few thrusts later. His seed was sticky and bright on Scorpius’s hand. He touched his fingertips to his tongue and sucked. It tasted astringent and viscous.

Mortification settled thickly like a wet snowfall. John yanked up his pants and grinned lecherously back at him. “Didn’t think you’d do that, to be honest.”

Scorpius put himself back together without being able to meet his eyes. “The moment you realize I can rise to any challenge will hopefully be the moment you stop baiting me.”

John laughed again. “Or you’ll what? You’re so full of dren. You realize you’re challenging me to bait you.”

Suddenly, Scorpius sat in a battered kitchenette. A pile of papers and books were haphazardly stacked at his feet, a hasty pile scraped quickly from the table. Harvey sat across from him with an alarming smile. The kitchen was flooded with late morning sunlight, and by the stove, stood John whistling, wearing a loose threadbare bathrobe. 

“How do you like your eggs?” John chimed in as Scorpius glanced around, his eyes finally rested on Harvey, who was lackadaisical in his chair. 

No matter how much Scorpius glared, he couldn’t pressure Harvey to drop his expression, and eventually, Harvey responded. “Well? How do you like your eggs?”

“Raw,” Scorpius grumbled to Harvey.

“Sunnyside up! Got it.” Chirped John from the stove.

“What are you showing me?” The anger and hunger for abuse hadn’t left Scorpius, it lingered like a virus. He strongly considered leaving, but his curiosity trapped him. There must be some reason behind this shift. 

“John cooks eggs for people he recreated with if they are still there in the morning, but this memory is a gem. You see, John only remembers this memory in his dreams.”

“Why?” Grumbled Scorpius again but this time, testily. If this was the reason, he should leave now. He had no interest in being comforted with breakfast for his lack of control.

And John turned around, swayed, but successfully placed individual plates of eggs, bacon, and hash in front of Scorpius and Harvey. He dragged a chair over, sat heavily, and all but leaned into Scorpius’s plate, who noted his pupils were blown black, set back in a sweat-sheened face. “Go ahead, gorgeous. Eat.”

“He’s high.” Scorpius said blandly.

“He’s very high, and also drunk. He finished his dissertation and got his dream job, but lost his long time girlfriend and spent his thirtieth birthday alone. He cut a little too loose, shall we say. Went on a wild two-day bender. But this memory is from the morning after _the twins_.” He leans in conspiratorially, “They were beautiful. Tan skin. Long legs. He somehow convinced them to come home with him last night. I’ve constructed this so that we replace them.” His eyebrows twitched excitedly. “And what do you think they did?”

Scorpius popped one of the egg yolks with a fork, it oozed. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me that he spitted them both in a performative burst of masculinity.”

Harvey’s grin grew large and nasty. “You’d be wrong. Quite the opposite actually. They took him, in turn.”

Egg dripped off Scorpius's fork as he held it frozen from the plate to his mouth. “Oh.”

“Yes. So enjoy! This is how John treats those that _feed_ him.”

John had stars in his eyes, propped happily on his hands and elbows. He was beaming with adoration. Still, the drugged quiver obvious in his face, tainted the expression. He wasn’t even present enough to remember what happened the night before, and according to Harvey, he wasn’t mentally capable of remembering any of this later.

Scorpius put his fork down, leaned back. “What is the point of this?”

“Do you want children?” John interrupted. “I want children. I want a wife and kids. And I want to be in love. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Scorpius said plainly. He held Harvey’s eyes, annoyed. Harvey shooed his look away.

“Mmm, that’s a bummer, but I get it. I’m going to be the best dad, the best! Super dad!” He shot up to standing, wobbled. “Too many bad dads around already. Why add to the pile, right? Did you like your dad?”

“I killed him.” Scorpius couldn’t stir up the needed emotion behind the statement. It fell flat.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s tough. Yeah. My dad is okay, but I still want to be better.” He swallowed thickly and grimaced. “So I need to throw up. Don’t go anywhere, sweethearts.” 

“This is ridiculous,” Scorpius said once John trundled away into the apartment. It was time to leave. Harvey was obviously being obtuse. At that moment, Scorpius decided against visiting his clone again. He’d let him rot and not give him the satisfaction of death.

Harvey shoveled potatoes and eggs into his mouth mirthfully. He picked up a strip of bacon with his fingers, poked its end at his now standing twin. “Before you go. I’ll divulge a little secret. Your whole obsession with vengeance is something you have to move beyond, Scorpius. It’s only holding you back. There are other options out there.”

“I’ll take it into consideration.” Sighed Scorpius as he left.

Returning to Katoya’s training was like icing a wound. He noted that Scorpius was doing well, gave him the information he wanted without too much fuss. The whole detour wrapped itself up nicely, with a bow. D’Argo uncovered the truth from his brother-in-law Macton and defeated him. Katoya recovered from being struck unconscious. John even survived the anti-scarran training despite scorching his hands. Still the ride back to Moya was quietly pensive. Scorpius kept himself from dwelling unnecessarily on Harvey’s last words. He would prove him wrong. His success would be the ultimate proof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also because I'm a crazy perfectionist, I'm going to be adding some pictures to this story.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey finally discloses his betrayal on the Peacekeeper Command Carrier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I rewatched the season finale of Season 3 and it is a hot gay mess, and obviously I need to capitalize on it.
> 
> This takes place during Season 4: Episode 17 Constellation of Doubt.  
> H+S are in memories from Season 3: Episode 20 Into the Lion's Den (Part 1): Lambs to the Slaughter.

John had blown out Aeryn’s brain in the middle of Moya’s bridge. At first, there was panic. John had finally snapped, but upon inspection, Aeryn wasn’t real. She had been swapped for a bioloid sometime during her brief absence on the settlement. The real Aeryn was likely on her way to Scarran torture if she wasn’t dead already. Dread seeped like an internal wound throughout the ship. Bruising was apparent everywhere. John sank into a depression that was unshakable. He was ruminating in a dark place, watching reruns of a strange Earth documentary about Moya’s crew on Earth. He wouldn’t sleep. The only word on his tongue was a secret Scarran base, Katrazi.

Whenever John was in a mood, Scorpius had fallen into the trend of asking Harvey about it. Despite how annoying his other was, Harvey’s insight on Scorpius’s nemesis was almost always accurate. Although he was hesitant, if he didn't probe Harvey, the precarious situation might tip out of his grasp. It was better not to let the distaste of his clone taint a possible boon.

Scorpius entered into a memory that was in the middle of playing out. In this memory, he sat on Crais’s old throne in his command carrier quarters. John sidled up the stairs with bruises fresh from his assault in the generator room.

Scorpius had visited this memory more than a few times, especially after his torture under Grayza. He was under pressure, both from his own ambitions, his concerns about John’s loyalties, and now Mele-On Grayza threats. His reaction was considered at the time, but after the fact, he realized he was encouraging the wrong emotion out of John. Pushing him to fear for his planet and his friends caused him to recoil, explode outward, take everything down with him. It was a catastrophic failure. 

Scorpius had plenty of time to reflect on what he could have done differently when he was lying in his grave, buried, and shot through. It was no coincidence he found Aeryn when he did, floating in space with heat delirium. He was looking for a way in, and she was it. To get John under control, he needed to offer things he wanted, not things he hated. Aeryn was an obvious key.

While his eyes twitched around the room looking for Harvey, the memory played out. John swore he couldn’t work any faster. Memory Scorpius showed him a recording of Earth. John launched up angrily. They began to fight, and with the I-Yensch bracelets on, both were aching from shared pain. Scorpius delivered his ultimatum. 'I will keep you alive so you can witness your world’s destruction.' While this memory Scorpius acted with appropriate menace, current Scorpius winced. This was a lofty statement, and not entirely accurate. It was a boast if anything. It backfired so badly. Now his methods were different, but it always seemed like too-little-too-late with John.

The memory froze as John was thrown across the room. Harvey stepped out of an alcove shadow holding a remote control. “I’m assuming you know what you did wrong here?”

“Of course I know what I did wrong here.” Scorpius snapped. “Do you think I haven’t examined this failure from every possible angle?”

“Nooo. While you think you have, you haven’t.” Harvey grinned smugly. “You haven’t examined it from my angle.” 

Scorpius seethed. “You are the one being obstinate. I’ve asked multiple times!”

“Maybe, like in this case, you aren’t asking in the right way, hmm? Let’s talk about it now. You are aware that John rebelled against your threats and now can barely trust you with a weapon, but I’m sure you are unaware of how close you were to getting him on your side during this time.” He gestured to the frozen scene.

Scorpius was momentarily shocked before hiding it behind a scowl. “Do tell.”

“Oh, nothing much to tell. He watched what you shared with him about your past. Naturally, he had entered the command carrier with all intentions of sabotage. He had no defined plan of course.” Harvey circled closer to Scorpius. “However, he was enjoying working on the project. Wormholes are an obsession for him too, you see. And if anything, he’s empathetic. He has had few experiences with Scarrans, but he did believe in your assessment of their threat. If you had played a softer hand after your mutual assault, I’m sure he would have found a way to get you out of that pickle with Grayza. Perhaps the Scarrans would be dead by now.” He ended inches from his other’s ear.

Scorpius hissed, paced away from Harvey. When he had grounded himself, he spun around angrily, paced back. “If you hadn’t been hiding his energy signature changes, I might have known this! Admit it!”

Harvey shrugged. “I admit it. I didn’t want you to kill him. I wanted to live.”

“How are you so short-sighted!? Why would I have killed him!? I needed him alive! Conscious! Willing to work! I was shackled to him! What treachery did you expect of me!?”

“Treachery enough to spend sixty cycles traveling to Earth to destroy it. I told him so.”

Scorpius’s anger quelled instantly. He responded quietly. “It continues to surprise me how much we have diverged.”

“Perhaps we don’t know ourselves very well.” Harvey was tinkering with the frozen memory Scorpius. He poked at the I-Yensch bracelet, inserted the unlock code. It clinked off into his hand. “So how did you, a person with chronic pain, manage your disorder while synced with John?” Harvey attached the bracelet to his own wrist, swirled it around like a cheap bangle from a street bazaar.

“I don’t remember. Plot hole?” Scorpius blandly scowled. He was thankfully able to keep his temperature down during those days despite the many challenges. It could have been due to the fact that the Peacekeeper Carrier was always set cooler for his general comfort as commander or perhaps his body was simply behaving for once. On some days, he would burn through numerous rods for no apparent reason, and on others, he’d be stoked with rage without running red.

“Breaking the fourth wall now are we? Original.” Harvey huffed shaking his head. “Were you ever inclined to go the other way while wearing them? Not to hurt but to—.” He made an obscene gesture.

“You’re in my head, Harvey. I’m sure you wouldn’t be reminding me of these bracelets if you hadn’t already seen the adjoining memories. I did not masturbate while John and I wore them. I was unaware that he did either. Can we get back to the matter at hand? You admit you betrayed me.” Scorpius was finally pulling the truth from Harvey, and Harvey barely cared. It was infuriating.

“Yesss. What do you want from me? It is no big secret. There is nothing more to tell.” Harvey glided up the stairs to the frozen John, clicked his bracelet off as well.

“Then why not tell me from this at the start!”

“Because you would have killed me.”

Scorpius was angry again. “I could have killed you for any other reason at any other point in our brief and unfortunate history!” He pointed heatedly at Harvey’s face.

“Yes.” Harvey clicked the bracelet onto Scorpius’s gesticulating wrist. “But you haven’t. So I must be useful to you.”

Scorpius was already struggling to remove the bracelet. The removal code kept failing. “Haaarvey…” He growled. “Get this thing off me!”

“Oh, I think not. Let’s test the extent these bracelets synchronize nerve impulses, shall we?” Harvey hopped up on the conference table and flicked open his codpiece. He wasn’t sure why Scorpius kept him around, but he had settled on two ideas, either Scorpius enjoyed mentally sparing with someone or he enjoyed their odd physical relationship. Harvey could deliver on both these fronts. If anything Harvey was honest with himself, and he honestly enjoyed both the sparing and the intercourse. He dragged a hand over his sex. It plumped pleasantly in response.

Scorpius stilled, and gulped dryly. He felt his own stir, but he was resistant to dropping his anger at this situation. Harvey had withheld this information to what end? The rest of that day back on the command carrier was complex. John had retrieved his module from Moya, and the two of them had traveled a wormhole. At the time, Scorpius had hoped that the elevation he felt transversing the wormhole was a symptom of his cresting success with John and his project, but it was obviously a distraction for Crais to board Talyn and detonate it. He had said ‘I’m standing in your heart and I’m about to squeeze.’ Crais was correct. It effectively killed the project, but Scorpius had survived without a heart before. He was particularly hard to kill. He had to refocus Harvey.

He drew out his dagger and stabbed himself in the wrist, but it didn’t disarm Harvey of his erection like it had disarmed John in the memory. Harvey groaned delightedly at the pain. Scorpius drew a shaky breath in. He swallowed back his traitorous, pleasurable nerves. “Stop this. I want to talk about John’s current mood. Aeryn...” His cock lurched. “What is he going to do about Aeryn?”

“Mm, yes talk about John.” Harvey had fallen back on the table and was continuing to massage himself rigid. “He still wears that outfit, yes? Gods, imagine riding his thigh in those pants. How appealing is his throat in that jacket? You enjoyed the last time you visited. I’m sure you still think about it.”

Scorpius shuddered. If that was the reaction he got out of Harvey when he wanted to talk about his enemy, he wasn’t going to get anything useful out of asking. He was only going to become more plagued with arousal. He glanced around at the paused memory and immediately felt scrutinized by his memory self, frozen and posturing against the fallen John. The frozen pair dissolved as he joined Harvey on the table. “Enough. You’re a tralk, but an easily satisfied one.”

“Yes. So easily satisfied. Keep talking.” His eyes were half-lidded as he smiled at Scorpius kneeling at his groin. He was hard now and wet. When Scorpius released his own member, it appeared the same. The I-Yensch bracelets had connected their own burgeoning libido equally. Harvey wondered who thought such a tool would be more useful for torture. The fool could have made millions of credits in the pleasure market.

“You’re a drannit.” Scorpius bit out, dragged Harvey’s hips to him. If he could finish, it would be easy enough to get more information out of his other. Time was irrelevant here in his mind, but he wanted Harvey’s insight quickly. John made rash decisions and if Scorpius missed an opportunity because he was frelling his clone, he would never live down his own disappointment.

Scorpius pressed abruptly into Harvey and choked. Pain electrified up his spine. He fumbled on Harvey’s hips. “Ah!” The bracelets had shared Harvey’s rough penetration. He cursed himself for not considering it but was suddenly loath to pull out. The pain came in shuddering waves as he held firmly hilted in Harvey’s hole.

Harvey rocked his hips. This pain was nothing new to him. “You act like this is the first time you’ve fucked yourself,” said his clone with a smirk. 

Scorpius hissed, drool dripped off his lip. He was hunching forward, trying to regain his composure. “Don’t move!”

Harvey rocked his hips again. Scorpius bit back another hiss. “Oh, I’m sorry, is that jarring? Allow me.” Harvey pressed off the table and braced his arms on Scorpius’s shoulders. From this angle, he had better leverage. He ground his ass down on Scorpius. Slowly, he built a slow pace as his walls relaxed around the intrusion. Scorpius was groaning into his neck, eyes closed tightly. This was obviously the first time he’d experienced being anally penetrated, and as Harvey enjoyed it, he too was benefitting. Harvey lifted his other’s head, and Scorpius’s eyes lazed open. “Hey Mickey. I think he likes it.” 

The I-Yensch bracelets shared with Harvey Scorpius’s experience of fucking into someone, so while Scorpius learned the pleasure of being taken, Harvey’s cock throbbed after each thrust as if he had made it. It was dizzying in its escalation and quickly brought the two into a state of mindless ecstasy. They licked each other’s tongues and rasped into each other. As they writhed, their arousal was beginning to multiply with the bracelet’s addition. It quickly became difficult to discern who was reaching their own sexual peak. At some point, they had fallen back on the table and were banging out a haphazard rhythm. Scorpius had his hands on Harvey’s jerking, slick dick, while Harvey was two fingers deep in Scorpius’s ass. 

Gasping, and full of each other, they reached a singular, spirally climax that pulsed out for longer and longer microts, leaving them gasping for breath and shuddering. Afterward, lying on top of one another, their heartbeats fell into sync, and neither wanted to move for much longer than previously after coupling. They remained curled in a pile like two lizards in a sunbeam. Blitzed.

“Did that finally pull the stick out of your ass?” Harvey quipped finally. The afterglow was burning off, and he wanted to get an edge in before it had completely evaporated.

“Harvey, you’re a drelk.” But there was no anger in Scorpius’s voice.

Harvey chuckled and nuzzled under Scorpius’s chin. “Now, where were we?”

“If you touch yourself again, I’m taking that bracelet off your hand even if I have to cut your wrist through.” Once again, there wasn’t any disdain behind his words. To Harvey, it almost sounded affectionate.

“No, no, I meant you were asking me about John and Aeryn. What specifically is going on?”

Scorpius sighed. “Keep up. Scarrans have kidnapped Aeryn. John had to shoot her bioloid duplicate. He’s not sleeping and has holed himself up in his room, obsessing over discovering the location of a Scarran military base.”

Harvey dug around in his memories of John. He was prone to moodiness if his way forward wasn’t obvious. “Has he resumed sleeping with Aeryn?”

Scorpius propped himself up. “Not that I know of. Why would that matter?”

“It matters to John, but I suppose in this instance, it's irrelevant. As long as there is a chance she is carrying his child, he will go after her regardless of his own future with her.”

“How?” Scorpius still had an arm wrapped over Harvey. He tightened it.

“Likely carelessly. He will have to go alone. No one on Moya will follow him on this. He lost their faith during the command carrier debacle.”

Scorpius agreed. John was approaching a state of panic. He was bound to do something, whether Moya’s crew supported him in his decision or not. It would be rash, so how could Scorpius capitalize on his rashness? There was much to consider. But he had questions about the memory they still inhabited too. “Why would Crichton have changed his mind about me on the command carrier? I tried to share my past with a neural clone of John collected from the first Harvey, and he wouldn’t hear it. He thought I was trying to garner his pity. Why was it successful on the command carrier?”

“John is changing, Scorpius. He’s changing all the time. Maybe the John on the command carrier was more willing to listen. A whole cycle of difference.” Harvey shrugged. “You’re changing too. I would’ve thought you capable of destroying Earth, and yet you claim that was never your goal. That it was a boast.”

Scorpius finally let go of Harvey. “If I spent sixty cycles traveling to Earth, this part of the galaxy would be left to be devoured. My revenge against the Scarrans has always eclipsed anything I have felt for John. Perhaps you’re misremembering my drive, being that you don’t seem to hunger for vengeance as I do. John is an ignorant, pitiful innocent, and his planet is likely full of the same. I destroy them only to return to a conquered territory when I’m so decrepit I can hardly think? If I’m even alive at all. How is that logic? I should not have been so foolish to even pretend that was my goal. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed by an outcome before. I practically wanted death.” He snorted suddenly, slid off the table. The failure had been sobering. He wouldn’t fail like that again. He simply couldn’t.

“Do you wonder why John called out to you after you left?”

Scorpius looked back, brow arched up, perturbed.

“I wonder too.” Harvey simpered.

Scorpius slammed his hands down on the table. “I would have rather died than spent one more microt in that fekkik’s company. Now, get this thing off me.” Scorpius jangled the bracelet in Harvey’s face aggressively.

Abruptly, Scorpius snapped back into his cell. There was a voice at his door, and it was John. He was subdued, but he had an offer. Yes, Harvey was right, no one on Moya would follow John anywhere, but he hadn't considered Scorpius, himself. He would go to the ends of the universe to get what John was offering.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey notices that Scorpius was bothered by John's death threat in another way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This happens during We’re So Screwed Part III: Season 4 Episode 21.
> 
> Oi this one, _this one_ , I could retool it forever and it still wouldn't be right. So here you go, it's a big ol sloppy joe.

The last ahn was reminiscent of the perpetual barrel roll John and Scorpius were stuck in after riding the wormhole to bizarro Moya. First, Scorpius struck a deal with the Emperor that got him out of torture. Then, Scorpius was handed over to John where Scorpius was threatened with death by his rescuer. Mid-revolt, he pretended to betray John only to save him. The entire time he acted as torture had severely drained him when it hadn’t. Finally, in some backroom, he was able to pry from John that the man had really planned to leave him at the mercy of the Scarrans even though he was only there because of John in the first place. For someone that Harvey had trumped as a good, loyal person, his betrayal was shocking at its best and pathological at its worst.

Even though Scorpius had luckily maneuvered the only obvious course of action into place, destroy the flowers, John still went about looking for alternatives. With John on his way to the Peacekeeper Command Carrier, Scorpius had a moment to have a little chat with Harvey.

“You lied to him! He could have blown my brains out. It was clever, yes, but need I remind you, if I die, you die too.”

“Why are you complaining? It worked! You’re not dead. Besides, why do I need to defend myself anyway? It wasn’t me that lied to him. It was the collared Harvey you left in his brain. _Need I remind you_ that you forced him to watch out for your bacon in any way, shape, or form. If this was the direction he went, you must be really out of favor with John.”

“It was the clone you were duplicated from!” Scorpius insisted.

“By that logic, it was you yourself that lied to him. We are but copies of the original.” Harvey bowed mockingly.

Scorpius scoffed, paced around the liminal space.

“You were hot for it though.” Harvey murmured behind a curled lip.

“What was that?” He had calmed himself, so he kept his voice level. Still, his gaze was heated. Despite it, Harvey was relaxing into mocking confidence.

“That gun in your face? John.” The curled lip had only twisted inward more. “Got you hot.”

Scorpius straightened his spine and continued his glare, but said nothing.

“Mmm. Thought so.” Harvey winked at Scorpius saucily.

Scorpius acted like Harvey was his most overtaxing child, and absolutely didn’t want to encourage him. As he glared, Harvey changed. His smirk became John’s smirk; his face, John’s face, body for body.

“Oh, and look I even made Winona.” His voice had changed to match as well. "Fancy that."

Scorpius offered a belabored sigh. “And?”

Harvey, as John, grasped the collar of Scorpius’s scaled armor, drew him close, and shoved Winona against his forehead. “Prove to me you didn’t give them the wormhole tech.” He smirked. “Pleasure me.”

“This game is stupid. You can’t kill me in my own brain.”

“I could always shoot you in the knee cap. There is death and there is pain. If the threat of death has failed, then I threaten you with pain.” He tapped the gun against Scorpius’s temple. “Get down.”

Scorpius kneeled as if he was doing a great favor allowing this joke to continue. The gun was still pressed to his temple as he unzipped John’s leather pants, drew out his erection. He looked at it, and then looked up grumpily.

John scowled and shot him in the leg. Scorpius howled, gripped his grazed, bloody thigh. “It’s not going to grow a second head. Get to it or leave.”

Scorpius swallowed, apparently deciding the fastest way to end this debate with Harvey was to end it quickly because he grasped John’s length and slid his mouth down to his knuckle. He did this a few times, closed his eyes. There was a question of how long Harvey would last, but what did it matter, degradation wasn’t a problem for him. His thoughts about this situation could go somewhere else. He could process this outside of Harvey’s company later.

The gun slipped down as John relaxed. He cupped the back of Scorpius’s head, and whispered heavily, “take your hand down.”

Scorpius acceded, and brought his mouth down further over John’s cock. To his surprise, he was held there with the leverage of John’s hand on the spot where his neck met his skull. He attempted to pull back but failed. Then he tried to relax into it, to make do with what breath he had. John mercifully began to move, guide him. In between trusts, air was a privilege.

John fucked in long strokes into Scorpius’s open throat, but his pace was building. He was reaching a crescendo, adding small contented murmurs as he went. Until he pressed into Scorpius and held him there until he spilled into him. Scorpius jerked, and when Harvey looked down, was wincing trying to swallow around a flood and a dick. When he released him, a trail of spit and semen trailed from Scorpius chin to his spent cock. Scorpius, himself, was glassy-eyed, which was a new expression. He dropped his face.

John crouched down to grab his chin. “As I suspected.” Scorpius was resistant to look at him, so he dragged him back and slipped his tongue into his mouth. Kissing was never as engaging to them as to others. It was a good indication of interest if anything. Biting was nicer. In this situation, it was meant as a final tease, but Scorpius was more receptive than normal. He leaned into it. Sucked his tongue. Nipped his lip. Breathed raggedly.

And then abruptly pulled back and stated. “Stop it.”

Harvey smirked with John’s mouth one last time and went back to being Harvey. “You’re still aroused. You could’ve fucked me like that.”

“What I’d really like to know is why he’s so invested in betrayal? We had a deal. I help him save Aeryn, he gives me the information I’ve wanted for cycles.”

Harvey pondered his original. This was a weird thing for someone to be thinking about after what they just did. “Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure. But you could’ve fucked him first, and after I still would’ve told you about all your mistakes.”

“You’re as infuriating as John.” It was a rasped whisper.

“And you’re avoidant as ever. You want loyalty from someone that has adamantly decided never to trust you. This isn’t about what you do. This is about where you’ve stood from the moment you first met John, and he’ll never forget it. John holds a grudge. It’s one of his weaknesses. He sees it as noble, but he is also not entirely wrong, if he suddenly lost the wormhole technology, he would be immediately expendable to you. And loyalty that does not make. You expect unquestioning loyalty from someone who is very aware that there are contingencies to your continued loyalty.” Harvey breathed sharply in. “You know you’ve likely made him a much worse person than before. On Earth, he had rough edges, sure, but here? The whole galaxy has eroded him, but instead of making him smooth, it’s made him sharp.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that.” Scorpius was in the midst of a very difficult day. He expected it to go one way, it went another. He had counted on John to at least make an impressive showing for good, and he arrived, made an impressive showing, then the cold slap of reality. He’s lucky to be alive. Practically a whole cycle on Moya, and still Scorpius was sent to death like he had never once been valuable to their survival. It was mind-boggling. It hurt in an unfamiliar way.

Harvey must have sensed Scorpius’s turmoil, because he slid over, slung an arm around his shoulders, but his words were far from comforting. “He will never trust you. Ever. He will always attempt to be rid of you. Forever. This is a constant I can promise you.”

“How can you possibly love a person that hates you so completely and without remorse?”

Harvey chuckled. “You know the answer to that already, you just have to look for it. I’ll give you some advice instead. Sikozu is very beautiful is she not?”

“Yesss—?” He hissed. However, he was clearly curious where this line of questioning was going.

“She’s also very smart and has been throwing herself at you. You’ve already fornicated at least once? Yes?” Harvey pulled him closer conspiratorially.

“I fail to see your point.” Scorpius scowled. He hated Harvey having any awareness of his waking life.

“The easiest way to avoid the question of why you might love someone that hates you is to simply be with people that don’t. You should stick with Sikozu. See if you can love her instead? If you can’t, well.” Harvey breathed sharply. “Well, maybe ask yourself that question again.”

“No, I’ll answer it now.” He rasped, annoyed. “What your saying is you hate yourself, so it’s easy to sustain an infatuation to someone that despises you. You suggest that for me to avoid this pitfall that I should attempt to saturate myself in Sikozu’s affection? Try and care for her back?”

Harvey whistled. “Boy howdy, you’re smart! That’s exactly what I’m suggesting!”

Scorpius shook off Harvey’s arm. “Then why all these games? If you want me to be with Sikozu, why dangle John Crichton’s frelling cock in front of me like some length of sausage. Make me rise to these ridiculous challenges like a diabolical pissing contest.”

“Because I’m you, and I’m cruel. Best you remember that.”

“Don’t do that again.” His voice was quiet, but he brought Harvey eye to eye with him. There was a threat in the look.

Harvey laughed it off. “Done. I will not emulate John Crichton again. Unless you ask for it.” He stood, dusted himself off. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have Frasier reruns to watch.”

Scorpius mentally returned to his terrible day on Katratzi, but things were improving by the ahn. Towards the end of the day, he had convinced John to use his nuclear bomb to destroy the Crystherium stockpile. It was a well-deserved success, especially after that overbearing fear of complete failure. But like anything with John, within less than a solar day, whatever success they achieved together was forgotten and he was jettisoned into space with a bomb on his chest.

Harvey’s only comment was “c’est le vie.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When John's tracker suddenly goes quiet, Scorpius reconsiders assimilation with Harvey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This happens during The Peacekeeper Wars Part I.
> 
> Enjoy~

Braca was sprawled out on the conference table in Scorpius’s reclaimed quarters on the Peacekeeper Command Center. His legs were still wrapped around Scorpius’s middle while Scorpius loosened his grip on Braca’s throat. The resulting sigh had a shiver run through it. Scorpius quietly pulled out.

"I’m pleased Sikozu is not fulfilling your needs in all areas, sir." Braca's voice was still distant even as he sat up.

"Sikozu is more than adequate with variety. However, you were obviously interested and I was curious."

A confused flash passed over Braca. He recovered in a snap afterward and tried to stifle it.

"What is it?" Scorpius was suddenly tenser.

Braca scratched the back of his head. "Well, you seemed well-practiced, and I had always thought you weren't interested in men. The two thoughts were opposing. Pardon my confusion."

Scorpius liked Braca. It was abnormal for a Peacekeeper to be both upfront and so conscious of individual emotions. Most pretended that they didn't emote anything at all despite proof of the contrary. It normally led to a lot of passive aggression. However, his openness didn't alter Scorpius's drive to be the opposite. "Fair."

After all, how was he supposed to describe that most of his practice happened in his own mind on a version of himself that would commonly emulate someone that had caused him so much trouble. It was too strange. And thinking once again about the loss of the wormhole technology, and all his aspirations to end this war quickly, Scorpius soured, and once he had put himself back together, went back to his desk. “You’re excused, Captain.”

Braca slid off the table, dragged his pants back on, and left with a sidelong glance.

Scorpius walked into Harvey’s view, a black monolith on the white sand. “I think we should reconsider assimilation.”

Harvey propped himself up underneath the beach umbrella and pulled down his sunglasses. “Oh? Why the change of heart?”

“I suspect there is still information about wormhole technology you haven’t shared with me. Perhaps with full access, I could comb over it properly, figure out how to stop this war without John.”

“You know that’s bullshit, right? Why do you continue to lie to me? Even if you had all the information in front of you, without John you have no clue how it fits together. Besides, there isn’t any more information. You removed me before it all got interesting. What does he call that alien? Einstein? Why don’t you admit that you’re sad John’s dead and you want access to all my juicy, lucrative memories of him? Because now you’re infatuated with him too, so absorbing that hiccup in my cerebral makeup is no longer a problem.”

Scorpius snarled. “Why am I even asking you for agreement? I have the power to forcibly assimilate you.”

Harvey peered at Scorpius. He did have that power. “What does assimilation mean to me? I’m still on the chip correct?”

Scorpius in little time had recovered from his outburst. He glowered darkly under the umbrella. “Yes, assimilation would take your memories. You would become a part of my psyche once again. The chip would, therefore, be forfeit.”

Harvey frowned. “Effectively, I wouldn’t be me anymore?”

“Effectively, but I can’t accurately say how my subconscious will handle you.”

“How about you leave me on the chip, and you assimilate a duplication? I could care less about that. Duplications cost me nothing. Take the information you want you greedy slut, leave me out of it.” Harvey considered the matter settled and went back to doing his crossword.

Every interaction Scorpius had with Harvey, he wasn’t sure if he enjoyed it or hated it, but Harvey wasn’t wrong. It was possible to assimilate a duplication. “I offer something easier but, I’ll need your attention for a bit longer.” He vanished the beach for the classic darkness and mist of his preferred liminal space. It was Harvey’s turn to scowl. In the space was the Aurora Chair.

“Old tricks are the best tricks?” Harvey muttered.

“It does exactly what you asked for. You remain on the chip. I assimilate your memories. Duplication isn’t required.”

“If you had said you were going to torture the memories out of me, I might have said yes without all the preamble,” Harvey said blandly.

“It’s only torture if you resist.”

“Shut up, liar. You’ve sat in that chair. It hurts regardless.”

“When do you have a problem with pain?” Scorpius raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

Harvey made a long tortured sound in the back of his throat. “I’d like to point out that I have the capacity for love, and you are me, and I still hate you. What does that say about you?”

“Get in the chair.”

Harvey rolled his eyes and sat. He tried to open his mind using calming exercises. The machine still churned harshly through his psyche like the blades of a combine, methodical, cold, and thorough, harvesting everything in its path and displaying it on the screen. Scorpius was enraptured from the start, but likely he was excited about any moment he could forcibly peer into someone’s cracked mind.

Time passing inside the mind was impossible to determine, the chair sped up memories, but seemingly not fast enough to get through Harvey’s accumulated experiences in what felt like days. He was breathing infrequently in the feverish throes of a cold sweat and had been for an untold amount of time.

“You have saved a lot of material.” Scorpius’s voice sounded overworked. All these memories were passing into him as well. Harvey wondered what it was like to stay receptive for this long. He wasn’t sorry, but there was a heavy, hazy quality to all his senses like someone had taken the moment before sleep and pulled it out into sweet long lengths of toffee.

“This isn’t even half of it.” He cracked an unfocused eye, swiveled it drunkenly up at Scorpius. He appeared unsteady and sweaty, gripping the chair’s back like he was going to fall over at any microt.

“Most of this is garbage. Why did you catalog an entire discography of Motown music? How many times did you rewatch all those Alien movies?”

Harvey chuckled. “Enough times to dream of that alien sexually. That memory I’m sure is coming up in the next quarter. Do you want a chair? You could sit on my lap, but that might be— counter to your power trip.” His vision swam. He made a foreign sound, the machine was still combing indecently through his mind.

“Can you really summon a chair in this state you’re in?” There was a clack sound on the metal floor as Scorpius stepped nearer.

“Haaaa, no. Don’t think I can manage it.” Harvey closed his eyes again. His senses must be frelled because the darkness that followed felt like falling off a ladder. From a faraway down, he heard himself say, “do what you want.”

Another clack as Scorpius moved closer, Harvey could feel his breath. There was a pause. “No, I think we’re done.” The wrist straps were loosened.

“Hey!” Harvey tried to muster the energy to seem forceful, with a free hand, he grabbed Scorpius’s wrist. His eyes flew open. “I can keep going.”

Scorpius hovered even closer. “You’re becoming unresponsive. Besides, why are you suddenly so interested in this? The rest can wait.”

“If the chip—.” Harvey rolled his tongue in his mouth to get it to work again. “If the chip were to fail. You should have all of it.”

“You are definitely done.” Scorpius began on the other strap.

“Promise me. You’ll watch them all.”

Scorpius stilled his hand on the other restraint. “I’m listening. What are you trying to say?”

Harvey sniffed. “All these memories, are me. Promise me you’ll watch all of them. If the chip fails, I want you to have them.”

“Are you worried you’re going to die?”

Harvey wasn’t sure how long the following pause was, but he did conjure a response eventually. “All the time. Sometimes I want to die. Sometimes I want to take others with me. But all the time.”

Scorpius considered him with his purposely neutral face. “I promise, I’ll watch them all. Of course, you’ll have to continue to submit to this process. However, that will be some other time, because you are done.” And Scorpius hoisted him up out of the chair, and brought him somewhere dark and quiet he always found calming.

“I remember this place,” Harvey said softly when he was settled unceremoniously on the mossy ground. It was damp and cold in the massive old-growth forest. It was one of the first places Scorpius visited after his escape from the Scarran ship. A small town, off the beaten track, had taken him in but treated him like a diseased invalid. It was cold enough outside to exist without constant torment. He ran out into the giant trees in nothing but rags. He’d never seen so much green in his life. “We set fire to it later.” He said even softer.

“Yes, but I still think about it. It was outside my scope of understanding. I would have liked to have done better.” He listened to the birds sing a jilted tune. “But stay for as long as you’d like.” He turned to leave.

“Stay.” Harvey was crumpled on a bed of moss with his back to a tree. His eyes were closed.

Scorpius hesitated and then grumbled. He pushed Harvey a bit forward, settled behind him. “Relax.” His arm threaded around Harvey’s neck and tightened down on his carotid arteries staunching the blood from pumping. There wasn’t any pain. Harvey shivered but then dropped quietly into unconsciousness. Scorpius released the blood choke and Harvey resurfaced abruptly.

Like a gasping breath, Harvey was immediately more alert than before. The choke had hard rebooted his brain. “Mmm. That was nice.”

Scorpius snorted but said nothing. He stayed awhile.

For the time of John’s crystallization, he was able to watch through all of Harvey’s inane, and sometimes elevating, memories. He understood him better afterward, but he also understood John. He understood much more about John.

When John reappeared, the tracker suddenly registering again in Scorpius’s head, it was like an atom splitting. It didn’t matter that he had begun a war with the Scarrans. It didn’t matter that he was the Commander of an armada. It didn’t matter that he had won the first stretch of battles against his enemies. John was alive and he was going to see him. This was five minutes to midnight and John was going to finally see that without the technology locked in his brain, the world as they knew it was going to end. Scorpius finally knew how John was going to react to this situation. He’d seen it all in Harvey’s memories.

However, Scorpius did not know how John was going to react to this situation. At all. While his blood seemed to pulse faster than ever before seeing this dead man walking around telling him ‘no,’ the day’s progression was so beyond his expectations that Harvey’s assimilation was fundamentally useless to predict any of John’s actions whatsoever. John charged forward. Things happened. Innocent people died. They ended up on a Scarran ship.

Emperor Staleek ripped the cooling apparatus from Scorpius’s head. Coolant and brain fluids gushed out as Staleek crushed the rods, threw that container to the ground, and trampled it to bits. Scorpius reeled but was able to rely on his past training to calm himself and regulate his temperature enough to keep from Sebacean heat delirium.

After John left to supposedly give the Scarrans all the information Scorpius had pursued for cycles, Sikozu created a primitive alternative to keep him marginally cooler. Though weak, Scorpius collected the broken remnants of his cooling centrifuge from the cell floor. The chip was fried, scorched beyond repair. Harvey was ended.

Scorpius was discovering that things only went well when John wasn’t around. It was a strange fate that he needed to be around John to achieve his life goal. For those 60 solar days of John’s supposed death, he had mourned for him in his own way, and now less than a few days into finding him alive, he had abandoned his successes. He was on a Scarran ship, his chip duplicate was dead. He was in chronic pain once again. His nemesis was offering everything to his enemies for an unborn baby that he hadn’t even made, his clone did. What a mindfrell. It’s as if to wield wormholes, one had to become as warped as the tools themselves, a chaotic mind somehow lending itself to the chaotic math of a wormhole's making. It was the only obvious reason for how someone with such poor planning and bad luck continued to stumble through life un-decapitated and yet blessed with this incredible knowledge.

But he had time to waste, at least until the Scarrans came back and killed them all. It was worth a shot. He closed his eyes and went to the liminal space. It was time to see how his subconscious had digested his neural clone. “Harvey? Are you here Harvey? I was attacked. Your chip has been destroyed.” There was no answer. The silence was deafening.

When he returned to the cell, he couldn’t resist being quietly gloomy. He disliked that the word that kept coming to mind was ‘friend’. ‘Your friend was killed.’ As if an extension of himself, only available in his own head, could be considered a friend. It was pitiful. However, there were few people in his life that were remotely dependable. Even fewer, that were remotely loyal. And even fewer, that weren’t in it for any benefit at all. Harvey might have been a parasite but he was open to Scorpius in a way that was reminiscent of family. Now that was pitiful. Maybe it was better that he was dead. He had been carrying a tumor without recognizing it.

Thinking that way made Scorpius wince. It didn’t seem right to brush off Harvey’s end like that of a pest being squashed. He thought on it more until he couldn’t. They were at war, and there were events occurring that needed his full attention.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the end of the war, Scorpius might have accomplished everything he wanted, but he is far from at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy oh boy. John makes a character appearance!

Scorpius felt Harvey 2.0 dissolve. It meant that John, while comatose, was still mentally present enough that his neural clone could follow the eradication program and perish. It also meant that the wormhole information was likely burned from John’s brain as soon as the black hole dissipated. Finally, it meant that Scorpius would no longer be privy to John’s location or his well being from this point onward.

Despite Scorpius’s unsmotherable pride that wormhole technology did _indeed_ stop this war to end all wars, losing the connection he had to John was a bit of fallout he wasn’t sure what to do about. With John still unconscious and the proceedings of the peace delegation underway, Scorpius found himself checking the spot in his consciousness where John's tracker normally sat only to find it empty. This wasn’t a new experience. When Scorpius thought John was dead for the many solar days after he was crystallized, he had dealt with it in his own ways. At the time, he might have considered it grieving for the information in John’s head more than the person himself. Now, he wasn’t able to shrug off that, in all likelihood, when John woke up (Scorpius was positive he was too stubborn to die in a coma) and went on with his life, they would never see each other again. It was surprising to Scorpius that this registered as a problem. 

When the peace delegation concluded and the Peacekeepers and Scarrans left the ship with their appointed Eidolon advisors, Scorpius returned to his quarters to speak with Harvey. He appeared easily enough. Although the chip had been destroyed by Emperor Staleek, the assimilation had kept the neural clone intact, and as expected, Scorpius’s psyche coped with Harvey by keeping him distinctly separate. Apparently there were too many aspects of Harvey that did not mix well with the rest of his subconscious makeup. After Sikozu’s betrayal, he had reached out to Harvey again and was surprised to see him materialize unscathed listening to the 1812 Overture and wearing a Napoleon Bonaparte costume. At the time, an odd relief flooded him.

Recently Harvey had set up their liminal space like a 1980s Miami beach house. Scorpius felt a bit strange surrounded by so much white. Harvey himself had undergone a few transformations as well. Between the duplicated chip Harvey to the assimilated Harvey, he had forgone the cooling suit. When Scorpius had asked, Harvey had shrugged, “Why put on a show? It’s just you. You know what you look like under all that right? Maybe you need to be reminded.”

Now, Harvey sat on the sofa wearing small shorts, smoking a cigarette, and reading a magazine. He didn’t look up when Scorpius appeared, but he did lazily say “My aren’t you smug.” Immediately, Scorpius soured. Harvey always slid between the ribs like this, and assimilation didn’t change that.

“I have a right to be. My idea stopped the war.”

Harvey looked up from his magazine and held Scorpius’s eyes. “No, your idea was to give the wormhole weapon to the Peacekeepers. You never thought John would be the likely choice to wield that power.”

“John is clumsy, a poor planner, and prone to emotion. Pardon my oversight.”

Harvey huffed. “He is also responsible, considerate of sentient life, and neutral politically. A higher power judged him worthy of this information too if that didn’t clue you in.”

They mutually glared at each other for a microt. 

Harvey broke the tense silence first. “Harvey 2.0 is dead then?”

“Yes.”

“You aren’t sure what to do with your life now that you won’t be chasing John around for answers?”

Scorpius sighed. “I am a survivor. I’ll find something to do.” _It’s not that._ He wanted to add but didn’t. He paced to the sliding glass door overlooking the white beach. It was always an experience to realize he was looking at a world he had never physically visited. 

He could feel Harvey considering his back. “You were obsessed with something and now there isn’t something to obsess over?”

“Obsessions come and go. I’ll get interested in something else. You know that.”

Harvey scoffed. “Why not admit to yourself you will miss John. Because your life is infinitely more interesting with him in it. Not that _you_ could possibly be boring, but you can miss a person’s influence. It’s acceptable.”

“He’s never going to want to see me again.” He glanced back to Harvey who hadn’t moved on the couch but was giving him his full attention now.

“That’s definite.” Harvey’s face was carefully expressionless. “But you’re still upset about it?”

“Upset is an exaggeration.”

Harvey hummed. “Possibly. But if you weren’t upset by it, you wouldn’t be bringing it up meer ahns after victory. John’s going to wake up, and he’s going to kick you off this ship. If you don’t want that to happen, come up with a solution.”

“Any solution I come up would be suspect. There is no logical reason to stay here.”

“Sounds like there is no solution at this time to this particular problem. Maybe a solution will present itself later. Other opportunities and all that. Think about John’s and Aeryn’s tumultuous relationship for a microt.”

“I’d rather not. It’s not a fitting comparison.”

Harvey huffed and continued. “Okay, I’ll simplify it. Wait until John decides he wants to talk to you again. If he doesn’t,” Harvey shrugged.

Scorpius went back to looking out the window for a while. When he turned to go Harvey was still watching him blankly. Scorpius walked up alongside him on the couch and placed a tentative hand on his unprotected neck. Harvey twitched. “What does that feel like?”

Harvey tried to still under the hand. “Like I’m a crab that’s molted, soft and sensitive. It’s familiar and different all at once.” Scorpius frowned. “Sounds terrible doesn’t it?”

Scorpius made a low considering sound and walked for the exit. Harvey quipped at his retreating back. “If I disgust you so much like this, maybe you should think about why?” But Scorpius was already gone.

John woke up as Scorpius expected. He named his son D’Argo and spent most of his time with Aeryn planning their next steps. Scorpius overheard bits and pieces. The remaining crew decided to travel to Hyneria to help Rygel regain his seat as Dominar. It was decided for Scorpius that he would be getting off at the next habitable planet lest he wanted to be charged as a war criminal. This seemed a bit hypocritical to Scorpius. Was he a general in the Peacekeeper army and won battles? Yes. Did he have genocidal plans to annihilate the Scarrans? Yes, but this didn’t happen. Did his actions cause the death of Moya crewmates? Yes, but Moya’s crew had killed many of his subordinates as well. Instead, most of his accused death count was caused by John’s lofty morals, attraction to high stakes situations, and exceptionally bad luck. The crew didn’t agree.

The planet they found was, unfortunately, a desert planet. Scorpius wondered if the crew was aware of how sadistic they could be working together. John volunteered to take him down to the surface via transport shuttle. Braca and the small band of peacekeeper soldiers that made it through the battle of Arnessk were getting abandoned on the planet as well. No one else came to the departure. This was expected.

Sitting next to John in the shuttle, Scorpius was quick to try to maintain a conversation. “I wanted to ask, John. Are you still able to predict wormholes?”

“Can’t give it up, huh Scorpy?”

“Unlikely. There is too much potential.”

John shook his head but restrained himself from fighting the issue. “No, I can’t predict wormholes anymore. I made a deal with Einstein and he delivered, so poof, no more wormhole knowledge.”

“Unfortunate.”

“Not really. I’m glad I’m no longer a topic of interest with all the big baddies. Maybe I’ll be able to relax for five minutes before someone else pops up asking for secrets of the universe.”

“Will you go back to Earth? You know where that wormhole is.”

“Nope, I sealed it up right before I got crystallized. I didn’t want any Scarran or Peacekeeper using the place as leverage, remember? You wanted to help with that? Besides, I don’t want to. It’s not a good place for Aeryn. It probably won’t be great for my son. Hell, don’t even think it’s a good place for me anymore. They need to figure some things out first. They’re in time-out until they get their shit together.”

John constantly surprised Scorpius. It was a factor that made his departure so strangely challenging. “You are choosing to be without your people in an unfamiliar galaxy?”

“I have people. I picked them. They can get me through anything I don’t understand. They’ve had enough practice with that.” John grinned thoughtfully. Scorpius had witnessed John’s transformation to his current heart-eyed state over the last week or so. He approached everything now with a softness that was unseen before. 

Scorpus wanted to squash that softness like a bug. It was a reaction surely bred into him. “How did it feel to kill millions with that black hole?” The pleasant look on John’s face cracked. Scorpius was altogether too satisfied these days.

“Shitty.” John’s face pinched uncomfortably. It was as if bruises formed under his eyes in mili-microts. “It should never have been an option.”

“But it was. What happened was the best outcome.”

“I’m a mass murderer.” He whispered distantly as if he was alone on the shuttle.

Scorpius didn’t have any issue with necessary death. It was a core part of any world he participated in, first the Scarrans and then the Peacekeepers. Now that they were at peace, maybe death wasn’t to play as large a role in his future. He somehow doubted that. Still, John wasn’t easy to convince. “Perhaps it will help you to know that your decision resulted in the least unnecessary death and only the death of soldiers. If any other person had the ability you did, I imagine it would have been much worse. If you must carry that as a burden, then that’s your choice.”

John breathed shallowly and swallowed. His haunted expression sank back behind his normal ease. “Easy for you to say.”

“Yes, it is easy for me to say both as someone who has killed many and as someone who saw no other course of action.”

John accessed Scorpius next to him. He was visibly wary, and at one point looked like he had a response, but he said nothing. The rest of the trip down was silent.

At the landing site, the shuttle door slid up, and Scorpius was greeted by the inward suction of hot dry air as the shuttle decompressed. The landscape was a rich baked orange color with lumpy melon-shaped trees and plants. An outpost lay a few hundred steps beyond their landing location.

John accompanied him to the door, but it had all appearances that John wanted to make absolutely sure he left. 

“John.” Scorpius was suddenly hesitant to get off the transport. “If this is the last time I ever see you, I wanted to say.” John’s face had taken on an edge. “That I think you’re very fascinating. I hope for your continued survival. The galaxy is more interesting with you in it.” The edge was only sharpening. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

John eyed him with an intense scrutiny. He opened his mouth once and then clearly reconsidered. He sighed relaxing his forehead into his hand. “Aw, what a happy ending, the tin man found his heart. I knew you had it in you. But,” He grabbed his shoulder guard dragged him close. “If I ever see you again, it’ll be too soon. Stay the hell away from me and my family. I might still have nightmares about your face for the rest of my life, but I don’t want my kid to even remember it. Now.” He pushed him in the direction of the door, “Get the frell off my ship.”

He stiffly shook hands with Braca as he departed, nodded to the straggler peacekeepers.

From the ground, watching the transport depart, then walking into town, dealing with the normal questions, securing transport elsewhere, Scorpius had an unfamiliar feeling. It took days for him to pinpoint and recognize the emotional twist of the knife. He was forlorn. Wormhole technology had soured for obvious reasons. His vendetta against the Scarrans was satisfied, for now. He could give a dren about the Peacekeepers, especially with Grayza at the helm. While the galaxy was at peace, he felt far from it. He had always been at odds with the universe, given his hybrid nature, but it was bizarre to finally be without direction in a vast galaxy. He’d started from scratch before, but this time he had legions of enemies. He was notorious. But if he wanted motivation, opposition helped.

It was days before he felt that he could appear in front of Harvey again. Mostly because the idea of being needled right now was unwelcome, but also Harvey, in his stripped state, triggered a strange vulnerability that he didn’t enjoy experiencing. It made him angry. Like Harvey’s nudeness was a direct expression of Scorpius’s weird emotional fray, even though the two were unrelated.

When Scorpius felt appropriately steeled, he reentered the white apartment of his decorated liminal space. Harvey hadn’t moved much. It was like time was moving slower now that he was assimilated. He startled a bit when Scorpius prowled across the room without a greeting and pressed him into the couch with an aggressive lick to the neck that swiftly became a bite. Harvey jerked in Scorpius’s grip, which he tightened as Harvey wiggled. “Ah. Come on, break it in a little first.” But he was shuddering already under Scorpius’s teeth and tongue. The texture of his exposed skin was nothing like the hard manufactured slip of bodysuit and armor. It had an unfamiliar taste. He chewed it to bruises. 

Harvey was making a series of incredibly new sounds too, like peaked whines, sharp pants, and bitten off groans. He emitted a panicked whimper when Scorpius brought out a knife, but in contradiction, he pressed into the tip of the blade until it drew a bead of blood. Scorpius licked the wound, sucked. Harvey drew short breaths through his gritted teeth. The knife tip was relocated to Harvey’s sternum and cut a shallow slash that received the same treatment. Another cut was added above a nipple. Scorpius, while performing this process, didn’t realize that Harvey had slipped his hand down into his shorts and, head thrown back, was masturbating. Moments later, Harvey spewed over his hand onto his stomach. Scorpius caught eyes with Harvey, cut off his shorts, and bent to lap his seed off his belly. He wrapped his arm around under him to stroke his other’s hole. Harvey moaned, ground his hips down. As if he only remembered the possibility that instant, Harvey struggled to unbuckle Scorpius’s codpiece.

Their union was suddenly a frenzy tinged with red. Scorpius thrust into him growled. Pulled out, did it again. Groaned. He bit another bruise into Harvey. But his build to orgasm was a brutal incline that towards the end, flayed him. He heaved long and low, and for several microts had no sense of self outside his slowing breathing. When he resurfaced, Harvey was petting him. 

Harvey was a mess. His pale skin bloodied and blooming with burgundy bruises. Scorpius hovered a hand over one but dropped it. Instead, he rested his forehead down on Harvey’s collar bone. Let the petting continue.

“Do you want to talk about what you’re going through?” Harvey said conversationally.

“Absolutely not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, I’m sweaty and lying on the ground, how about you? I wrote some more sex. How come no one considers like legitimately naked Scorpius/Harvey. No? Okay cool cool cool.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius comes to terms with his clone's eventual absorption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one hurt.

“Remember this?” Harvey gestured extravagantly to his tall and ink-black form. “I always liked John’s mental representation when I took over. His suppression was oh-so tantalizing hmm? Hard to forget that feeling.” He stuck out his tongue suggestively.

Scorpius scanned him up and down. “Elaborate.”

“You mean, ‘fun.’” Harvey as Scorpius John smirked. “Thrilling. Full of possibilities.” He slung an arm over Scorpius’s shoulders, lazily dragged his tongue up his neck.

Scorpius purposely ignored him, tapped his own chin. He had a series of schematics in front of him on a conference table. He’d set it up to speak with Harvey about it, but Harvey apparently wasn’t interested in working. “I am here for your input more than your games?” Scorpius chided.

John hung on him heavily while he waited, nibbled on him. “But you like my games.” He dragged a hand up Scorpius’s inner thigh. “I’ll make it worth your while. Then I’ll do whatever you want, but first.” He fiddled distractedly at a buckle on his hip.

Scorpius's perpetual glacial barrier began to thaw under his attention, and he leaned marginally into John’s groin. “Agreed.”

John hummed and deftly freed his other to be fondled, stroked him hard before he snaked the same hand around to finger his opening. Scorpius relaxing into his prodding was like ice in a glass cracking slowly while warming.

“I want you. Do you want me?” John whispered closely into Scorpius’s jaw.

“I want you to stop talking.” Ground out Scorpius breathily.

John inserted his fingers into Scorpius’s open mouth, pressed his head back on his shoulder. He was teasing his entrance stretching it open enough to accommodate the head of his cock. “You feel so good. Do I feel good?”

Scorpius made a noise through his nose, struggled to thrust back on John’s cock.

John nuzzled him but kept his hips at a distance. “Mm, not yet.” Scorpius’s dick was trailing precum. “You’re wet for me.” John reached down to squeeze his tip. Scorpius jerked into it with another guttural sound. John repeated it again but milked it harder, Scorpius’s response was to whine and bit down on his fingers. John hissed pleasantly. He began a pulsing rhythm, rolling and squeezing Scorpius in the palm of his hand at the same speed as penetrating him shallowly. He nipped at his jawline, licked. Drool was running down his forearm, so he put two more fingers in Scorpius’s mouth, cupped his hand against the biting. Scorpius clutched at any part he could grab on John. His breaths were quickening, escaping faster through his nose as he leaned more into the support of John’s shoulder. John sensed his resistance against his own pleasure crumble.

Scorpius keened with the fingers in his mouth and spurted hotly into John’s fist. John kept his rhythm unhurried and pumped two more spurts of cum out onto the table. “Look at that. That’s it. Beautiful.” He removed his fingers but kept him supported by holding his neck. Scorpius, once ungagged, panted open-mouthed but whimpered when John squeezed him again.

John lowered him down on the table into his own mess and prodded his shaft deeper. Pleasure curled up his spine. He dragged Scorpius into him, who bucked and groaned. “You like that?” John did it again, but drew back slowly. Scorpius practically mewed. “Yes?” He took his time fucking into his tight sleeve until Scorpius was hard again and snarling. John touched his new erection earning him a desperate thrust and moan, sank his teeth into Scorpius’s suited artery. Together they ground out their mutual collapse.

When they both blinked back alert, they were puddled in a heap on the floor. Harvey was once again Harvey. Scorpius untangled himself from his clone and pushed up to sitting heavily against the conference table. A relaxed exhaustion hung over him. Despite his agreement with Harvey, it would be hard to return to his working mindset from before. But it was no matter, there would be time later to work.

Harvey was looking at him from his thigh. He had his hands laced on his stomach and was fiddling with them nervously. This was far from how Scorpius felt at the current moment. He sighed, reached out, and stilled his hands. “What are you doing?”

"I love you. Do you love me? Can you say it? You haven't said it to anyone before."

Scorpius had an intensity that could snap a twig at twenty paces. His mouth must’ve fallen open because he immediately clamped it shut. The calm he had before left him abruptly, and for one minutia, he thought he would break out in a hysterical twisted burst of laughter. Instead, he bit down on those reactions, let them bleed out. He inspected his other hastily. There was nothing visibly amiss with his twin. "Something is wrong with you?" He said instead.

Disappointment flooded Harvey’s body. He dejectedly sat up. “Yeah, something is.” But when he looked back again, the expression was gone, replaced by his normal, unaffected nonchalance. He crawled into Scorpius's lap and settled against his chest. "You know what's happening. The time delays. The missing memories. I'm being absorbed into your psyche. I’m not going to be around, like this, for that much longer."

Scorpius’s calm was sinking back into him despite his struggle to keep affected, alert. Harvey's love confession was like the tide leaving to collect for a tidal wave, and now as it broke, the bone-deep exhaustion was back heavier than before. There was a strange pain in its return. "I could put you back on a chip. Stop the process."

"Naw. That won’t work. The corrosion has already begun. The chip would capture that as well. I’d still degrade on a chip or in here.” He tapped Scorpius’s forehead. “Pick your poison, but not me, I've come to terms with it.”

Scorpius snapped his teeth. A niggling disgust that his other was simply succumbing to his own eradication, gnawed at him. He could think of nothing to say for a long time. His sloshing internal turmoil was unable to settle on anything poignant. "Do you still wish you died in John? If I had left you there and not duplicated you?"

There was another long pause before Harvey responded. "In John's brain, there was always something new to discover. There was so much to take in and experience. Places I’d never have opted to mill around in if I was in your position, but with all the time in the world, I did. Emotions I, you, would have found uncomfortable that I had to sit in, absorb, reconsider. Here it's all familiar. Your memories are very painful to revisit. Your anger blankets almost everything, and you hide any other feelings very deep down, in the dark. When I do go and poke around, I always end up saddened. It's a mire in here."

From Harvey's placement on Scorpius's chest, he felt the other noticeably sink. "Ah."

"But I'm glad I'm here with you.” He drew back and quickly stated. “It's been enlightening. Maybe I got it both ways. One of me died in John. One of me got to come back home and tell you all about it. See how the original was holding up." At this moment, the original was hollow-eyed. “Look, don’t listen to me. When have you ever listened to me? You’re a-ok. You’re kicking ass. Don’t listen to me. You know I think we had an agreement before all of this. How about I take a look at your project, and we can forget this whole thing, hmm?”

As Harvey stood, Scorpius caught him and dragged him back down. “No. We’re not done. You’re me, where are your survival instincts? You must have some idea on how to stop your decay, some investment?”

Harvey wasn't sure if Scorpius was upset that his clone was dissolving and would be inaccessible or if he was worried about everything that would shortly become part of his essence, all the junk, and emotional conflict. His survival instincts were there, but they had been dialed back as he fell more into the fantasy of being a memory dweller. After all everyone survives in their memories. There were times in his past when the survival instincts flared, and then he relied on revenge to drag him through. If he was going to die, John was coming with him. Or if he was going to die, John was going to be suppressed and Harvey was going to go for a test drive. But this situation, Harvey’s absorption into Scorpius, was entirely different. It didn’t feel like dying for one. The threat simply wasn’t there. “It’s not really death is it?” He settled on at last. “How can I be scared to be you, when I’m already you? Maybe you are scared to become me, even a little bit.”

“I won’t become like you.” Scorpius shook his head. “You aren’t the first clone I’ve absorbed. Your memories get filed away for when I need them, but I stay in control. I stay me.”

Harvey growled. “I’m not like your other clones. Don’t treat me like I’m at all similar to your own straight duplications. If I’m so disposable, I’ll hop into your filing cabinet right now. Disappear forever for you—” Harvey visibly stuttered, and blipped out. The space he once occupied was empty.

Scorpius, who was preparing a nasty retort, glanced around, stood up. The liminal space was dark, quiet. Harvey couldn’t keep most of his scenery up for long these days. “If this is your idea of a joke, bravo. You can end it now.” As the moments stretched on, Scorpius wondered when he’d return, if he would at all that is. Fear slammed into him that perhaps that was it, Harvey was gone now, and he had wasted those last moments on useless bickering. He gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. “Harvey?” He rasped.

.

.

But to the silence, he whispered. “Harvey, come back.”

.

.

.

Harvey blinked back into existence. “To seldom reference— wait what was I saying?” Harvey looked up from the ground at Scorpius. It was like he hadn’t moved, hundreds of microts ago. Scorpius could only imagine what he looked like to his clone. He slid back down.

“Do you remember what we were talking about?” Scorpius swallowed dryly.

Harvey’s face tightened. His eyes flickered down seeking his last memories. "Were we about to have sex? Or something?" His twisted expression was enough to show he didn't think that was correct.

Scorpius sighed painfully, grabbed his clone's skull, and headbutted him lightly. “Then I will say, I can’t say it aloud, but I do feel it. And I will miss you when you’re gone.”

Harvey laughed. "What the hell are you on about?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever write a thing and say to yourself "yup, send that to Rockne S O'Bannon asap. I'm treating his characters with such integrity, nuance, and care. I'm sure he'd love what I've done." But at the same time also think "holy crap cut my eyes out, my tongue out, my hands off, place them in a box and send them to any cast member of that show that accidentally reads this with a note that says 'apologies lord or lady, I shall never again writhe in such filth." That's sorta where I'm at right now.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Lesson in Subservience](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29061255) by [iterations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iterations/pseuds/iterations)




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